Somatic Countertransference

Abstract

It is stated here, by the name of “somatic counter-transference, a particular kind of counter-transference: the one which appears through corporal manifestations more or less transitories in the analyst during the course of a psychoanalytic session. It is started from the concept of counter-transference as the whole analyst answer to the patient’s transference. The analysts, in general, are more accostumed to consider the feelings and occurences (what we usually called “psychic”) more than the corporal manifestations which occasionally can experiment in their sessions with the patients. They do not consider, in most of the cases, their own corporal position or their movement in the armchair, but they do so with their patients in the divan. However, a headache, a toothache or a stomachache, the desire to urinate or to defecate, a cough or a sneeze without begin with a cold, lethargy or sleeplness or whatever other kind of somatic overturning which can appear during the session could be included in the series of counter-transferential reactions. Trough three clinic ilustrations it is attempted to exemplify the somatic countertransference appearance and the necessity to analyze it to understand the sense of the symptom and its integration in the dynamic of de transferential-counter-transferential relationship.