On Countertransference
Searles has been singled out as one of the pioneer investigators of the potentially useful role of countertransference, and of the therapist's use of his/her own self in treatment.
In his 1959 article 'Oedipal Love in the Countertransference', Searles wrote that he not only fell in Pygmalionesque love with his patients as they recovered, but also told them how he felt Searles argued that “the patient's self-esteem benefits greatly from his sensing that he (or she) is capable of arousing such responses in his analyst” - a view which can be seen as a forerunner of intersubjective psychoanalysis with its emphasis on the spontaneous involvement of the therapist in terms of countertransference.
In his later paper of 1975, 'The Patient as Therapist to his Analyst', Searles argues that everybody has an urge to heal – something only distinguished in the psychotherapist in being tapped into formally. Using the concept of what he called the patient's “unconscious therapeutic initiative” - a precursor of much later thinking on patient/analyst interaction - Searles suggested that psychological illness is related to a disturbance of this natural tendency to heal others; with the surprising corollary that to help a patient the analyst/therapist must really experience the patient as doing something therapeutic for them.
In his 1978-9 article, "Concerning Transference and Countertransference", Searles continued exploring intersubjectivity, building around his belief that “all patients...have the ability to 'read the unconscious' of the therapist”. Searles emphasised the importance of the therapist's acknowledging the core of truth around which a patient's transference materialises.
Read more about this topic: Harold Searles