Countertransference can be used as an instrument in understanding the patient's projective identification. An analogy for the patient/therapist interaction is found in Bion's model of the infant's communicating by projection to the breast and the mother as containing and modifying such projections. The particular countertransference problems created by patients who have been objects of massive parental projections are examined. In such cases the patient's projections induce in the analyst diverse experience of past helplessness in relation to projections.
