This book deals with the nitty-gritty of understanding why countertransference remains an on-going challenge for psychotherapists and psychoanalysts. Over the years the emphasis has moved from theoretical disapproval to potential clinical advantage. This advantage is in practice often hard to achieve, sometimes due to the fear of the closeness in the psychoanalyst as much as in the patient. This thorough and thoughtful book will help students and more seasoned practitioners understand the way differing trends in understanding countertransference connect, relate and sometimes contradict. It aims to provide practical insight into the way countertransference experiences can be grasped, worked through and then worked with to powerful and good effect in the clinical work.

Praise for 'Countertransference and Alive Moments':

'The "Alive Moments" of the title refers to the heart of the matter. The essential emotional aspects of any contact between therapist and patient that are fresh and immediate, are now understood to underpin any intervention that has a real mutative outcome. Hinshelwood argues very persuasively that it is around these alive moments that the claims of psychoanalysis as a method for psychic change, rests… In summary, this is an excellent book which offers a scholarly yet easily readable review of the field, and as such is a helpful contribution to the literature.’ - Michael Halton, in the British Journal of Psychotherapy

'… Hinshelwood is describing his own quite original attempt among British analysts to reach a view of countertransference which synthesizes an object relations perspective, which tends to view it more as the result of the patient's projection, and the relational one, which inclines rather towards seeing the subjective contribution of the analyst… a useful book for the interested reader who is looking for a succinct account of counter-transference, its history and its impact on both analytic work and practice.’ - Karen Stobart, in the International Journal of Psychoanalysis