This article reviews both narrow and broad definitions of transference and countertransference and provides a map of how these definitions can be understood in terms of transactional analysis. It briefly differentiates four categories: (1) what the patient brings to the relationship (pro-active transference), (2) what the psychotherapist brings (pro-active countertransference or therapist transference—pathological, (3) what the psychotherapist reacts to in the patient (reactive countertransference—inductive), and (4) what the patient reacts to as a result of what the therapist brings (client-countertransference or reactive transference). Any of these may form the basis for facultative or destructive psychotherapeutic outcomes.
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