From torment to hope: countertransference in parent-infant psychoanalytic psychotherapy

This paper explores the concept of countertransference as a clinical tool in parent-infant psychotherapy. We describe various theoretical concepts that link to countertransference and outline six parent-infant psychoanalytic psychotherapy cases from our clinical work. We explore and illustrate countertransferential processes using three common clinical categories, anxiety, depression and personality disorder. We present a model of working with the countertransference that enables the clinician to identify the position they take up in relation to the most prevalent emotion communicated by the mother and infant in the therapeutic encounter.