During the course of treatment, therapists can develop feelings about the people in their clients’ lives. They may become annoyed with an intrusive parent, frustrated by an insensitive spouse, or intrigued by a glamorous friend. Psychoanalytic clinicians pay particular attention to feelings elicited by their clients, because those feelings can help to illuminate important facets of their clients’ inner lives, a phenomenon known as countertransference. Yet even for psychoanalytic therapists, feelings about important others, because they are not about their clients per se, may go undetected. Consequently, therapists may mistake clients’ descriptions of important others as veridical accounts rather than reflections of transference–countertransference dynamics. This is problematic, because therapists may miss opportunities to promote growth or even undermine the treatment. Further, when therapists adopt the clients’ perspectives and feelings without examination, an unconscious collusion can form between therapists and their clients.
One common instance of this is when a client is experiencing marital discord and blames their partner for it. The therapist may unconsciously collude with the client and share the client’s view of their partner. If the therapist does not identify her feelings as countertransference, she cannot consider important questions, such as why the client might be (unconsciously) conscripting the therapist into finding fault with their partner. Is the client avoiding painful feelings or evading responsibility for their contribution to the marital discord?
The therapeutic relationship is fertile ground for this type of collusion given its insularity. When treating individual clients (rather than couples or families), the therapist does not have access to alternative points of view that might help them achieve a more balanced perspective. This also points to a potential side effect of the therapist’s empathy: It can predispose the therapist to overidentify with the client, which can lead to countertransference collusion.
In the article “The Allure of the Patient’s Objects: Countertransference Pitfalls and Possibilities,” published in Psychoanalytic Psychology, Tamara Feldman presents clinical examples as well as ways in which therapists can identify and address this type of countertransference. Among these methods is modifying the therapeutic frame to include other points of view. One way of doing so is to incorporate episodic meetings with the client and a family member (e.g., a significant other) into the treatment to broaden the therapist’s perspective.
Feldman concludes the article by highlighting the importance of recognizing and working through this type of countertransference. When properly understood, the therapist’s countertransference reactions can become valuable tools for understanding their clients and advancing treatment.