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As a construct, the elaboration of countertransference experience (ECE) is intended to depict the implicit and explicit psychological work to which therapists submit their experiences with clients. Through ECE, defined as a mentalizing process of a particular kind, therapists' experiences are presumed to acquire and increase in mental quality and become available for meaning‐making and judicious clinical use. In this paper, we claim that such an ongoing process facilitates engagement with common therapeutic factors, such as the therapeutic alliance and countertransference management, enhancing therapist responsiveness in psychotherapy. We synthesize relevant literature on countertransference, mentalization, and, in particular, therapists' mentalization, informed by a systematic literature review. As a result, we propose a model for assessing ECE in psychotherapy, comprising 6 diversely mentalized countertransference positions (factual‐concrete, abstract‐rational, projective‐impulsive, argumentative, contemplative‐mindful, and mentalizing), 2 underlying primary dimensions (experiencing, reflective elaboration), and 5 complementary dimensions of elaboration. Strengths and limitations of the model are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Clinical supervision provides the foundation for cultivating ethical practice and professionalism for mental health trainees. Exploration and management of a supervisee’s personal reactivity or countertransference (CT) is a critical component of supervision and has clear ethical implications for clinical management and the development of clinical competence. This article discusses supervision practice and presents the results of a study that investigated the influence of supervisor–supervisee relationship on clinical and counseling doctoral students’ CT disclosures. Respondents completed the Working Alliance Inventory–Supervisee form and the Personal Reaction Disclosure Questionnaire, which assessed respondents’ comfort and likelihood of reporting CT reactions to hypothetical clinical interactions. Results of this analogue study demonstrated positive associations between supervisory alliance and reported comfort and likelihood of CT disclosures, highlighting the importance of the alliance and drawing attention to supervisors their responsibility to particularly attend to thebonddimension of the relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I aim to outline the importance of working clinically with affect when treating severely traumatized patients who have a limited capacity to symbolize. These patients, who suffer the loss of maternal care early in life, require the analyst to be closely attuned to the patient's distress through use of the countertransference and with significantly less attention paid to the transference. It is questionable whether we can speak of transference when there is limited capacity to form internal representations. The analyst's relationship with the patient is not necessarily used to make interpretations but, instead, the analyst's reverie functions therapeutically to develop awareness and containment of affect, first in the analyst's mind and, later, in the patient's, so that, in time, a relationship between the patient's mind and the body, as the first object, is made. In contrast to general object-relations theories, in which the first object is considered to be the breast or the mother, Ferrari (2004) proposes that the body is the first object in the emerging mind. Once a relationship between mind and body is established, symbolization becomes possible following the formation of internal representations of affective states in the mind, where previously there were few. Using Ferrari's body-mind model, two clinical case vignettes underline the need to use the countertransference with patients who suffered chronic developmental trauma in early childhood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]