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Both Sigmund Freud and Melanie Klein recognized the existence of countertransference but distrusted its clinical use. This idea was the one that prevailed until the late 1940s, when Heinrich Racker in Buenos Aires and Paula Heimann in London played decisive roles in reinstating countertransference. More specifically, both Racker (in 1948) and Heimann (in 1949), independently of and without contact with each other, claimed the importance of countertransference for signifying the transference and unconscious processes that the patient re-enacts in the analytic relationship. The context in which their ideas were developed allows us to recognize differences within their common view of countertransference as a useful tool in psychoanalytic work. In this article, we present the development of both Racker's and Heimann's ideas on countertransference and attempt a comparison of similarities and differences of those ideas and put them into a historical and clinical-theoretical context.

An attempt is made to compare two psychoanalytic concepts which by 'belonging' to different psychoanalytic groups have come to be defined and used differently. The paper is also an inquiry into the possibility of a comparative psychoanalytic method. The two concepts are 'repression' and 'splitting of the ego' and an examination is made of the semantic similarities and differences. Some clinical material is offered that adds indicative clinical evidence to test the semantic comparison. The aim is to answer the question: Are the terms simply alternative ones for similar clinical phenomena? The paper offers one method which could provide an answer. It represents a general method for clarifying and maybe reconciling the differing points of view of competing psychoanalytic schools.

The author distinguishes three types of change seen in patients over the course of a psychoanalysis, noting that analysts are most interested in the type that occurs uniquely as a result of the analysis itself. He discusses Freud's views on the analytic relationship and contrasts these with the way the relationship is conceptualized within object relations psychoanalysis, and he compares Freudian views of transference and countertransference with Kleinian ideas. The use of interpretation is also examined from different theoretical viewpoints. The centrality of aggression in the Kleinian view of the psyche is put forth as a potentially controversial aspect of Kleinian technique.

The author traces a debate about the concept of 'internal objects' that took place between 1937 and 1943 at a time when a group of British analysts was forming around Melanie Klein. The debate is set within a complex of personal, group and organisational dynamics, which the paper makes a start on unravelling. The history of the British Psycho-Analytical Society at this time exemplifies Bion's notion of group schism. The events in the Society's history demonstrate defensive aspects of the interaction between the opposed groups, which support members against various anxieties. These include the stress of the work of analysis, but also in this instance the particular anxieties deriving from the collapse of psychoanalysis in Europe, the state of war of the country as a whole, and the death of Freud shortly after he came to London. This psychoanalytic anxiety/defence model clarifies some aspects of the debate about internal objects, and demonstrates the way in which these various anxieties and defences become organised around a scientific debate in a scientific society.

An attempt is made here to organise a body of facts available in the published literature concerning who, when and why Freud and his ideas were first noticed during the early years of psychoanalysis. Specific citations and references mentioning Freud reveal a surprisingly wide range of different kinds of cultural interest. In fact, we can identify seven different cultural locations which adopted some element of the ideas of Freud for specific reasons: (i) the interest in the theory of hysteria, from the Society for Psychical Research, commencing in 1893; (ii) the interest in the psychoanalytic theory of sexuality, from Havelock Ellis, from about 1895, in support of radical attitudes towards sexual freedom; (iii) as part of the reaction against the pessimistic attitude to treatment in British psychiatry, from around 1905 onwards; (iv) the endeavour of W. H. R. Rivers and others to create an empirical science of psychology embracing scientific psychoanalysis, around 1910-15; (v) the application of psychoanalysis to the psychological novel by writers and also to understanding the creative process, using Freud's theory of symbols, around 1913; (vi) the attraction of some progressive educationalists to Freud's outline of child development, from 1913; and (vii) the struggle of philosophers, including Bertrand Russell, to comprehend the implications of the psychoanalytic view of the unconscious. It is claimed that the multivalent quality of Freud's ideas contributed to the success of psychoanalysis over the suggestive therapies, and in the conflicts with dissenters within the psychoanalytic movement.