IJSP Number 8, 2026

International Journal of Supervision in Psychotherapy, Number 8, 2026 Page | 20 that she be bathed and her hair washed before returning to school. I wondered if my sense of repulsion was only my own proclivity, a reactive countertransference, or was I sensing and identifying with her mother ’ s emotional reactions to her. In subsequent sessions she talked about the absence of any conversation with her mother. “ She always watched TV”. “There was never any closeness.” Loraine said that her mother never wanted to touch her, and certainly not give her a bath. The few times she recalled having a bath she remembered her mother screaming that Loraine was making a mess. In reaction she stopped taking baths. When she was an adolescent her mother admitted, “ I wish you had never been born”. I was emotionally impacted by Loraine’s recounting her relationship with her mother — a relationship that was consistently neglectful of Loraine’s physical and relational-needs. I had two intense responses. I felt a protective tenderness for the neglected child and I felt anger at her mother ’ s disregard for Loraine ’ s welfare. As Loraine continued to tell me stories of how she was uncared for I thoughtfully examined my sense of “ repulsion ”. While at first, I assumed that my feeling of repulsion was my own, I began to wonder if I was picking up on some unconscious communication encoded within her stories. One day I inquired, “ I wonder if your mother was disgusted by you”. She immediately responded with, “ That ’ s it. That ’ s the word …DISGUSTED, that describes my mother…she was always repulsed by me.” My sense of repulsion and my subsequent inquiry revealed an integral part of Loraine ’ s childhood experience. My repulsive reaction had provided me with a window into the distain Loraine ’ s mother felt about her; my sensations allowed me to come up with the word “ disgust ”. For almost a year I was non-consciously identifying with Loraine ’ s mother ’ s attitude of “ disgust ” and assumed that it was mine. Yes, her musty smell remained but what was now most important was my anger at her mother ’ s neglect of Loraine and my desire to be protective and gracious to the child she once was. Our therapy eventually addressed how Loraine replicated her mother ’ s behavior by neglecting her own appearance, cleanliness, and health. TRANSFERENCE AND COUNTERTRANSFERENCE I have come to think of countertransference as the psychotherapist bringing into the therapeutic encounter their own internal organization of life’s experiences, their unique way of creating meaning. Our childhood and school experiences, the quality of our early and current family relationships, the joys and sorrows of our love life, the things we dislike or avoid, what we read and the music we enjoy, our professional training, theories on which we rely, the style of how we transact with our clients --- all of these individual proclivities form the unique substance of what we psychotherapists bring to each therapeutic encounter. When we consider this perspective, every moment of psychotherapy involves the interplay between two people, a co-constructive process. In discussing countertransference, it may be useful to have a common definition of transference. In Integrative Psychotherapy [16, 3] transference can be viewed as “the expression of the universal psychological striving to organize experience and create meaning. It can also serve as the means whereby the patient can demonstrate his or her past, the developmental needs which have been thwarted, and the self-stabilizing procedures which were erected to compensate .” [17].