BOOKS
R.D. Hinshelwood (2016) Countertransference and Alive Moments. London: Process Press.
Since 1950 or earlier, countertransference has increasingly been regarded as a tool for understanding the transference. This has been under debate, of course, since Freud’s early worry about Jung and Ferenczi. This book however makes a case for the subtlety of the countertransference and how, as a result of projective identification, countertransference not only represents a disposal of unwanted, unacknowledged and misunderstood experience, but it is often a form of communication to the analyst of the meaningless experiences that the analysand needs the analyst to understand for him. It sets out the developing tradition that moved from Paula Heimann to Wilfred Bion and Betty Joseph.
JOURNAL ARTICLES
R.D. Hinshelwood (1999) Countertransference. International Journal of Psychoanalysis 80: 797-818. Republished 2002 in Robert Michels, Liliane Abensoour, Claudio Laks Eizirik and Richard Rusbridger (eds) Key Papers on Countertransference. London: Karnac. Russian translation 2006.
This is a plea to recognise the deference in technique between the interpretation of dream symbols which was the classical approach Freud tended to advocate on one hand and the focus on the transference-countertransference interaction and communication at a level of unconscious communication. This remains a discriminating factor with schools of psychoanalysis today. The paper advocated the need for a greater attention to the enacted transference-countertransference and its correspondence with the unconscious dynamics seen in the free association and dreams.
Alberto Stefana, R.D. Hinshelwood and C.L. Borensztejn (2021) Racker and Heimann on Countertransference: Similarities and Differences. Psychoanalytic Quarterly 90: 105-137.
The revision on views of countertransference occurred around 1950 in many parts of the psychoanalytic world. The to most important contribntors were Paula Heimann in Britin and Heinrich Racker in Argentina. This joint paper pools our comparisons of ths written work of these two psychoanalysts.
CHAPTERS IN EDITED BOOKS
R.D. Hinshelwood (1997) Transference and counter-transference. In Burgoyne, Bernard and Sullivan, Mary (eds) The Klein-Lacan Dialogues. London: Rebus.
This paper was written up after a presentation at a London conference intended to create a dialogue between Lacanian and Kleinian analysts. The divergence of the two schools was significant – the emphasis on the socialised symbolic thinking that Lacanians concentrate on and the unconscious-to-unconscious symbolic forms of communication involved in the process of projective identification.
R.D. Hinshelwood (2013) Freud’s countertransference. In Oelsner, R. (ed.) Transference and Countertransference. London: Routledge.
In my developing interest in the countertransference, then if it is really a tool for gauging the interaction between two people, then it will be apparent in clinical material from before the crucial reconsideration of countertransference around 1950. it has been possible to go back to several of Freud’s detailed case histories to revealing moments in the text. For instance, Freud’s impatience with the Wolf Man, his devastating rejection by Dora, even Little Hans’ father’s reaction to his conversation with his son, all illustrate responsive reactions to the patient. These provoked reactions have important relations to the conflicts under treatment.