TRANSFERENCE AND COUNTERTRANSFERENCE IN COGNITIVE BEHAVIORAL THERAPY

Cognitive behavioural therapy/Interpersonal relations Background. Both patients and psychotherapists can experience strong emotional reactions towards each other in what are termed transference and countertransference within therapy. In the first part of this review, we discuss transference issues. Although not usually part of the obvious language of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), examina-tion of the cognitions related to the therapist, is an integral part of CBT, especially in working with difficult patients. In the second part, we cover counter-transference issues. We describe schematic issues that give rise to therapist counter-transference and explain how this interacts in different types of patient therapist encounter. We also examine ways in which the therapist can use CBT to help him/her modify the countertransference and, in the process, assist the patient. Methods. PUBMED data base was searched for articles using the key words “therapeutic relations”, “transference“, “countertransference“, “cognitive behavioral therapy“, “cognitive therapy“, “schema therapy“, “dialectical behavioral therapy“. The search was repeated by changing the key word. No language or time constraints were applied. The lists of references of articles detected by this computer data base search were examined manually to find additional articles. We also used the original texts of A. T. Beck, J. Beck, M. Linehan, R. Leahy, J. Young and others. Basically this is