COUNTERTRANSFERENCE ENVY TOWARD THE RELIGIOUS PATIENT Moshe Halevi Spero and Roberto Mester The intensive emotional sharing which transpires during the psychotherapeutic process ranges from basic, complementary understanding and empathy to complex, pathological phenomena such as symbiotic: merger, projective identification, and psychotic transferences (Little, 1981; Shapiro, 1974) Increasing attention is being paid to the ways in which psychoanalytic psychotherapy recapitulates critical aspects of early development in both therapist and patient, deepening our understanding of psychodynamic and object relational qualities of the empathic, interactional process Perhaps the most important expressions of these interactionaldevelopmental processes are transference and cou ntertransference Transference and countertransference require additional consideration when treating novel categories of patients which challenge the clinical experience and self-knowledge of the psychotherapist The religious patient belongs to this category, if only because the determinants of normal and pathological religious experience, and their meaning in therapy, are less well understood Equally less well explored are those aspects of the therapist's personality that are most vulnerable to potentially distortive interaction with the "religious" aspects of the patient's personality Review of the literature, including the resurgent scholarship since 1980-see, for example, Bradford (1984), Lovinger (1984), McDargh (1983), Meissner (1984), Spero (1985, 1986, 1987), and Stern (1985)reveals relatively few discussions of countertransference reactions toward the religious or ethnic patient (Devereux, 1978; Halperin and Scharff, 1985; Gorkin, 1986; Kahn, 1985; Ostow, 1965; Peteet, 1981, 1985; Spero, 1981) This paper examines some theoretical and clinical aspects of the emergence of envy in the therapist's attitude toward the religious patient MOSHEHALEVlSPERO,Ph.D.,is AssociateProfessor,Schoolof SocialWork, Bar-IlanUniversity; and SeniorClinical Psychologist,SarahHerzogPsychiatricHospitaI EzratNashimMental Health Center,Jerusalem,Israel ROBERTOMESTER,M.D., is Medical Director,NesTziyonaPsychiatricHospital,NesTziyona, Israel Addresscorrespondenceto: Dr MosheHalevi Spero,RechovShaulsohn66, Apt 13, Har Nof, Jerusalem95400 Israel The American Journal of Psychoanalysis Vol 48, No 1, 1988 © 1988 Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis 43 44 SPEROAND MESTER DEFINITION OF COUNTERTRANSFERENCE It is commonplace that countertransference reactions represent distortions of the therapist's unbiased, nonjudgmental, even-hovering, and essentially nonpathological listening and perceiving activity, which further jeopardize the therapist-patient alliance The contemporary perspective places equal emphasis on the potentially constructive aspectsof countertransference (Epstein and Finer, 1979; Langs, 1976; Searles, 1979; Winnicott, 1949) This perspective maintains that although countertransference is the psychotherapist's reaction, it is in many ways the patient's creation, elaborated upon further by the idiosyncratic needs and conflicts of the therapist's unconscious (Epstein and Finer, 1979; Heimann, 1950) Moreover, as the patient experiences during the therapeutic process certain longings, frustrations, tendencies toward closeness or distance, and the like, the therapist will experience these in reciprocal fashion unconsciously or will experience an unconscious response to the patient's transference needs (Searles, 1979a, b, c) In fact, Grinberg (1962) early differentiated two countertransference formations: "complementary identification," which reflects an activation, in response to transference, of past object relational constellations or conflicts in the analyst, and "projective counteridentification," when the analyst's internal experience of the patient almost entirely reflects the patient's projected internal reality Winnicott (I 949), and in similar form, Weigert (I 954) and Sandler (I 976) underscored the "objectiveness" or nonpathological nature of certain kinds of countertransference experiences and that countertransference can help the therapist better understand dynamic or interactional states in the patient The burden remains with the psychotherapist, of course, to differentiate those aspects of countertransference which are introjections of some element of the patient's personality and those which originate within the therapist Second, he must differentiate defensive counterreactions to the patient which indicate the unconscious attempt to have or share something which belongs to the patient, such as through identification with or envy of the patient, and those which indicate attempts to keep away from or fend off some aspect of the patient's personality, such as in boredom reactions or abject failures in empathy In discussing psychotherapy with religious patients, Spero (1981, 1985) and Gorkin (1986) note ways in which carefully calibrated countertransference reactions which prominently feature religious themes may inform about reciprocal problems in the patient, both on the manifest level (e.g., conflicts in religious identification) as well as on the level of unconscious psychosexual or object relational determinants of the patient's religiosity or more fundamental aspects of personality which underlie religiosity Mester and Klein (1981), discussing dilemmas in psychiatric interviewing of newly religious (hozer be-teshuvah) patients, mention two unique countertransferencereactions: COUNTERTRANSFERENCEINVY 45 a feeling of being "manipulated into the position of persecutor/punisher" and, with some patients, a feeling of envy The feeling of envy they attribute to the "unconscious and/or preconscious conviction that the patients had reached the ultimate psychological solution to existential doubting and emotional pains" (ibid., p 300) It was subsequently argued that this explanation of countertransference envy is incomplete (Spero, 1983) We shall now assess the envy reaction more thoroughly OBJECT RELATIONAL ASPECTS OF ENVY Envy is important not only as a basic emotion, but also as an aspect of early separation-individuation, object relational development, and transferencecountertransference reactions (AIIphin, 1982; Anderson, 1987; Klein, 1957) The central element in envy is the personal sense of lacking something which engenders feelings of inferiority or injured self-esteem, resulting from discrepancies between the actual self and the ideal state of self-representation (Joffe and Sandier, 1965) While envy always involves some combination of admiration, resentment, and hate, the envious person's narcissism receives an increment from the fantasy of one day possessing that which he does not have, and this inevitably involves some aggressive stance with regard to the object of envy (Klein, 1957) Envy, in other words, is an object-related constellation of behavior, including certain kinds of cognitions and feelings, which leads, in the normal range, "to an increased alertness which facilitates comparisons and thereby promotes differentiation of object and self" (Frankel and Sherick, 1977; Neubauer, 1982) Envy can be defined as a reaction to the discovery of some thing or quality lacking internally or externally, in fact or fantasy, combining an iidealizing tendency (toward the desired object) and aggressive tendencies (toward the possessor of the object) Envy can be distinguished from simple "want" in that (1) envy features a sense of inferiority derived from comparison to the possessor of the desired object, and (2) envy elicits the sense that the self will be like the idealized other once the envied object or quality is acquired In envy reactions within psychotic personalities, and to lesser degree in the normal personality during earliest stages of development, acquisition of the envied object may elicit the sense that the self has become the idealized other, combined with an experience of having materially reduced or eliminated the other The sense of guilt which arises from the fantasied realization of destructive wishes in envy can be recognized even in neurotic and everyday envy reactions Once self-other differentiation has occurred, depending upon the quality of such differentiation, envy may further elicit destructive or constructive consequences Envy may be dealt with by various mechanisms including introjection of or identification with the envy-evoking object or even 46 SPEROAND MESTER psychotic blurring of self-other boundaries When for some reason it is too painful to acknowledge envy, such as when envy awakens or results from repressed homosexual impulses or major discrepancies between ideal and actual self, envy may be defended against by avoidance, devaluation, or idealization These in turn may be expressed in manifest behavior in forms of exaggerated admiration, indiscriminate praise, greed, derogatory gossip, hate, or overt denial of envy As Wurmser elaborates, idealization acts as a defense against envy, hatred, and greed by endowing the object with that omnipotence the subject wants to possess (1981, pp 117, 199) These necessary qualities can then be vicariously experienced through mechanisms such as mirroring and idealizing transferences, projective identification, and so forth Even when envy is dealt with through adaptive measures, such as compensation, sublimation, or actually acquiring constructively that which is felt lacking or insufficient, retrospective analysis can often uncover the original destructive or hostile component or threatened danger to some object relationship The emergence of envy toward the patient may represent a distortive countertransference reaction, pointing to dissatisfactions on the therapist's part, which as such ought to be precluded from influencing the therapist's perceptions For of great concern is the extent to which the therapist's envy of the patient is designed to preserve the patient from the therapist's primitive destructive impulses (Greenson, 1967, p 229) When such is the case, we need fear not only the unpredictable reemergence of the repressed destructive impulses, but also, as Bion (1970) suggested, that the therapist's envy disguises unconscious efforts to prevent the patient from integrating his own thoughts and feelings From the contemporary perspective on countertransference, however, envy reactions in the therapist can be utilized, if properly modulated with complementary introspective and empathic attitudes, to comprehend some reciprocal element of the patient's experience While this possibility obtains for all countertransference experiences, it is especially likely in the case of envy since envy and empathy are both object relational processes which promote or distort self-other differentiation, building upon insights about the self in relation to others and by inferring conditions believed to exist in others In both cases, cues possessed by the object are processed by the self in relation to preexisting structural components of the self, serving as a basis for emotional closeness or distance (Buie, 1981) Empathy typically brings closeness, but in certain circumstances empathy enables one to preserve distance (Nathanson, 1986) Envy typically extends difference and distance, but in certain circumstances promotes a sense of sharing When the therapist experiences envy toward the patient, careful analysis of the therapist-patient interaction may reveal a number of insights into COUNTERTRANSFERENCE ENVY 47 some aspect of the patient's experience These include: (1) introjection of the patient's envy of the therapist; (2) idealization of shared qualities based on either an acceptance of or attempted denial of the patient's wish to identify with the therapist; (3) denial of the patient's hostility toward the therapist; (4) envy of the patient's seemingly unambivalent, defensively concrete ideological and emotional attitudes; (5) identification with the patient's transference-based idealization of some omnipotent object; (6) the patient's regression to primitive or infantile states which stimulate in the therapist's memories of early pleasures and object relationships (Will, 1979) In each instance, analysis of cou ntertransference envy begins from the possibility that such envy is based entirely in the therapist's personality Additionally, one examines the ways in which the therapist's reactions inform about objective states within the patient, and the implications of the therapist's personal solutions to his own emotional needs for the reciprocal aspects of the patient's experience With the religious patient, the therapist's envy of what seem to be the religious aspects of the patient's life may further elucidate conflicts or dissatisfactions relevant to religious expression in both therapist and patient This is particularly important in psychotherapy of nouveaux religious patients for whom religious change represents a crisis in its own right, recapitulating crises and conflicts of earlier psychosexual and object relational development Religious therapists working with patients who have reverted or converted to the therapist's own faith may experience envy of the patient's intense enthusiasm and punctillious observance of laws and customs which for the therapist have become rote The therapist may experience this envy in the form of admiration for the nouveau religious patient's perspicacity, his boldness in daring to point out weakness or error, and his ability to put aside or limit work and recreational activities in order to pursue extensive religious study Religious therapists' ambivalence about their own personal solution to the "priest-scientist" dilemma may experience renewed anxiety in the face of the nouveau religionist's singleminded dedication This anxiety may be suppressed through idealization of the patient's lifestyle Alternatively, such envy may mask a more destructive desire to take away the patient's intrusive perspicacity as well as to squelch his religious passion Envy reactions can be even further used to comprehend reciprocal feelings in the patient To this end, envy reactions may signify a therapist's unconscious identification of an aggressive component in the patient, or more directly highlight the patient's need to stifle doubt with arbitrary and extreme programs, habits, and decisions, or to deny personal shortcomings and the pain of the arriviste status by iconoclastic challenging of the seated religious community What is important, therefore, is not so much 48 SPEROAND MESTER the manifest object of the therapist's envy, but rather what such envy reveals about underlying dynamics of the patient's religiosity Below are a variety of illustrations of envy reactions toward the religious patient ILLUSTRATION A nonreligious psychotherapist completed her third session with a young religious woman whom she was treating for an acute anxiety disorder When the therapist was alone in her consulting room writing notes about the session; she had the following thought: "When the patient says the word 'rose' it has no perfume for me." The sentence was seemingly unrelated to the current treatment as the therapist could not remember the patient saying the word "rose" or speaking about flowers at all Intrigued, the therapist, at first alone and later in supervision, analyzed its meanings An early association was that the therapist could not enjoy the fantasied rose's fragrance whereas the patient could A subsequent thought was that the patient's religiosity was essentially a rose whose scent the therapist was unable to appreciate Actually, the therapist soon became aware of the fact that she experienced intense envy of many aspects of the patient's religious life Initially it seemed as if the patient's religiosity was intrinsically envyprovoking to the therapist, and there was no evidence in this case of an attempt to defensively reverse antireligious sentiments It soon seemed as if the therapist's concern that she might be depleting the patient with her envy reflected an introjection of the patient's envy of the therapist's freedom, relative lack of conflict, and other qualities which the patient attributed to nonreligious lifestyles Further associations suggested that the therapist's envy of the patient's religiosity served as a defensive barrier against the acknowledgment of disturbing sexual feelings That is, the thought that she did not share the patient's sensual interests, and then the idea that she indeed desired to share in the patient's religiosity, led to a series of sensual, erotic associations regarding the patient As the therapist considered her multidetermined interest in the patient's religiosity, she recalled that the patient in fact had mentioned on several occasions feeling distressed by daydreams with homosexual content This material had been only slightly explored in therapy In this case, the therapist's envy of her patient's religiosity not only brought to light an area of conflict in the therapist's personality but also pointed to similar conflicts in the patient's own life The psychotherapist's neediness (as it was eventually more fully understood) for the kind of maternal warmth expressed, in exaggerated form, in the patient's religious lifestyle helped her to more fully comprehend the patient's neediness COUNTERTRANSFERENCEENVY 49 ILLUSTRATION A 17-year-old young man studying in a yeshivah was afflicted by frequent anxiety episodes, confusion, and despair His scholarly achievements were poor and his social life marked by withdrawal and isolation He was referred for treatment to a nonreligious therapist who after initial sessions found himself doubting whether the patient needed any treatment at all During supervision the therapist realized that his atypical doubts about the patient's condition were related to feelings of envy The therapist perceived the young man as really quite self-confident, drawing inner stability from his apparently solid religious beliefs, characteristics the therapist very much wished for himself Closer examination of the clinical interviews helped the therapist acknowledge the difficulties the patient was having at the yeshivah, rooted among other things in his overdependence on his parents and his sense of insufficient autonomy The young man's occasional efforts at self-assuredness occurred primarily in contexts when he had an opportunity to criticize those who held opinions different than his Such a facade of self-security should surely have been transparent to the therapist The therapist subsequently grasped that his own craving for self-confidence and his own need to repair early disappointments with an elusive, withdrawn father were the bases for idealization of the patient"s religious belief and his distorted evaluation of the clinical condition The therapist's envy was the superficial manifestation of the defensive idealization Further analysis of the envy reaction helped clarify certain additional aspects of the patient's dilemma For example, the therapist's fantasy of wanting to possess the patient's religious beliefs highlighted an element of early oral greediness in the therapist which itself seemed to be a reciprocal response to the patient's attempted projection of an air of omnipotence within his religious bastion The therapist understood after further empathic attention that the patient suffered from a not small amount of ambivalence about religion itself secondary to his oedipal disappointments in which arena much of his religious attitude developed These and other,reassessments helped the therapist regain a more appropriate level of involvement with his patient ILLUSTRATION The following us a segment of long-term psychotherapy conducted by a nonreligious Jewish therapist with a 33-year-old orthodox Jewish male The patient (A.) had been suffering from hebephrenic schizophrenia for 12 years and had been hospitalized uninterruptedly for the past years 50 SPEROAND MESTER During the first two years of his current hospitalization, A.'s appearance was disheveled, his mood volatile, and he was prone to violent verbal outbursts Drugs seemed to bring only moderate relaxation A isolated himself from the rest of the patients, ate alone in his room, and refused to participate in sociotherapy or other group activities Instead, he spent innumerable hours walking the corridors mumbling biblical proverbs or talmudic aphorisms Occasionally, he nagged the staff with monotonous questions about unrealistic plans for his future (e.g., to become a fighter pilot in the Israel Air Force) For the past years A had been in twice-weekly dynamic psychotherapy During the initial period of psychotherapy, A spoke almost ceaselessly, in a highly disorganized way, and in a dull unemotional manner about his medications and daily preoccupations After several months the therapist found that during his silent reverie he was focussing increasingly upon aspects of the patient's external appearance, which included long earlocks, large velvet skullcap, and the various biblical and rabbinic quotations, even though these characteristics had remained unchanged since A.'s admission to the hospital Sometimes the therapist felt especially impressed with A.'s wisdom when A., usually apropos of nothing in particular, would cite some rabbinic aphorism The therapist had clearly begun to idealize his patient, lending to him a certain degree of deference more rightly due to scholars Further introspection revealed that the therapist had begun to envy the patient A indeed had spent many years studying in yeshivah and was fluent in the mode of speech and idiomatic expressions of scholarly religious Jews The therapist did not possess either the religious background or the knowledge, which often evoked in him distressful feelings of social alienation and historical dislocation At the same time, the therapist felt that his sudden, envious recognition of the patient's religious characteristics signaled a maturation in the links between his own self and his inner representation of the patient Compared to earlier representations, comprised of the devalued psychotic aspects of A.'s personality, the new representations were richer in attributes, better differentiated, and even possessed of desirable characteristics The therapist empathically felt that the patient, entangled in bizarre and nagging, stereotypical behavior, was also struggling against alienation and loneliness, attempting to assert the most healthy aspect of his personality (his religious knowledge) It occurred to the therapist that relating to the precariously preserved characteristics of the patient's premorbid personality could ameliorate communication and increase a sense of closeness, The therapist asked A to choose material from religious books and to read and discuss these with him during the first moments of each session A said he was willing to COUNTERTRANSFERENCE ENVY 51 so, revealing that he had stopped studying many years ago He described religious study as something that could bring him back to life It took several months before A could productively and consistently redirect his attention to religious books The continuous exploration of A.'s feelings of alienation illuminated a series of events which took place when he was 20 and still studying at the yeshivah He fell in love with the young daughter of the yeshivah dean His love for her was so intense that at a certain point he felt what he termed a "clash" in his heart By this he meant that the love for the girl displaced his love of God A felt that both loves could not coexist and, aided b,y the budding deterioration of his thinking processes, believed that he had committed a hideous sin which had further become known to the entire religious community He psychotically believed the community, led by the dean, had excommunicated him and declared him dead And dead he had been, said A., until the therapist brought him back to life Parallel to this evolution in therapy, A began to participate in social groups, joined a small Bible study group led by one of the nurses, and helped in various ward duties A still had periods of severe thought disorganization, paranoid outbursts of anger, and unrealistic plans for the future, but he now allowed himself to belong to his immediate community and claimed to be psychologically alive ILLUSTRATION The following is extracted from the intensive psychotherapy (by the senior author) of S., a 39-year-old patient from an ultrareligious hasidic background S began the present hospitalization, his 20th, in a manic state, claiming to be Messiah come to bring the Redemption to all who were of a ritually clean and holy state of mind S cast a remarkably imposing image: ruddy haired with a sparse beard trimming his wide-eyed and boyish face, filling his traditional hasidic garb with a massive 6'2" body, and walking with a hulking yet rhythmic gait During the early period of his hospitalization he patroled the corridors wrapped regally in his large prayer shawl Though fluent in contemporary Hebrew, S spoke with a conspicuous accent typical among hasidic sects of European-Ashkenasi background S explained that while it was permissible perforce to use contemporary Hebrew for mundane dealings, Messiah speaks of holy matters which can only be conveyed in original "lashoin ha-koidesh," the holy tongue It was occasionally difficult for the Israel-born staff to comprehend the patient, although the therapist, himself an immigrant from America and the tradition of Ashkenasi yeshivah seminaries, did not share this difficulty Sessions with S were rich in biblical and rabbinic material-often 52 SPEROAND h4ESTER meaningfully utilized-and engaging numerological discussions designed to demonstrate his Messianic acumen, the propitiousness of his arrival, and the folly of psychiatry's materialistic approach to the soul Occasionally S would break into dance and song; never wild, his facial expression undergoing an almost serene transformation Any attempt at therapeutic exploration or interpretation was responded to with a patient, teacherlike remonstration that all of S.'s behavior was "for the sake of heaven." Most of the sessions were stimulating, and the therapist soon found himself imitating S.'s accent both at work and at home On one hand, the therapist experienced the usual degree of frustration typical when attempting to establish a working alliance with a psychotic personality At the same time, the therapist very quickly acknowledged intense envy of the patient's behavior, one that transcended envy of the psychotic's ability to make use of regressive behavior not permitted to the therapist (Will, 1979) The envy of S seemed to focus on the strength of his conviction in his Messianic calling, his grace, his private mystery at whatever psychic level he experienced himself to enjoy a redeemed state While the therapist joined the rest of mankind in trudging on amid crippling doubts of ever truly witnessing the realization of the basic doctrine of Jewish faith that Messiah will come, the patient appeared to be the antithesis of such doubt Further understanding came from an analysis of the ways in which the therapist's countertransference reaction expressed a secondary elaboration of or response to conflicts in the patient If S exuded self-assuredness and Messianic omnipotence, these feelings were proportionate to the amount of doubt, weakness, and emotional hunger which existed deeper within his personality The patient was struggling not only against the hateful attack of painful introjects drawn from his own private interpersonal experience, but also in some way S was a victim of the awesome, increasingly debilitating internecine conflict that torments his country S had partially solved his problems by bringing the Messiah at his own initiative, by identifying pathologically with an internal object existing independently of any real Messiah S could feel a worthfulness as Messiah that was unexperiencable to him in any other state of mind The therapist, however, no less burdened emotionally by the interpersonal and ideological tremors round about him, is obedient to the stricter, less playful operating of the reality principle He ought to be able objectively to regard the patient's belief as delusional And yet there is for the therapist a temporary respite in momentary identification with the patient's delusion In a sense, then, the therapist's genuine envy confirmed the worthfulness of S.'s mission This awareness helped the therapist remain sensitive to the patient's experience as the, slow, almost sad surrender of psychosis COUNTERTRANSFERENCE ENVY 53 transpired In fact, the therapist chanced to meet S several months later on a Friday afternoon at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem With the sun casting its golden glow upon the myriad stones and faces, S suddenly appeared from around the corner where the therapist was standing, S.'s face catching full the annointing rays of providence Standing tall, well groomed, and dressed in his gleaming black caftan and fur hat, S continued in the therapist's direction and for a moment seemed to not recognize him When the therapist offered his hand, S recalled-perhaps everything-and returned a slightly distant blessing With a last glance, one that might hawe explored for a mutual perplexity, S turned the corner again and disappeared into the Sabbath The therapist was overwhelmed with depression This was undoubtedly the result of a sense of loss of shared deliverance, of Messianic omnipotence, of the possibility of private redemption from the struggles that continued to gnaw away within Old political and ideological lines had been drawn again, primarily because both individuals had recommitted themselves to good reality testing Yet S had become more knowable to the therapist not simply because S.'s delusions spoke to the therapist's neurotic needs, but because S.'s enviable characteristics, and the therapist's envy of them, served as a link across otherwise unintelligible, disordered thought processes As Searles reports (1979c), therapists working with primitively disturbed patients may develop a form of jealousy of the partially split-off aspect of oneself which enjoys at least momentarily a relatively close relationship with the patient, giving rise further to a sense of loneliness Emotions, as the object relations perspective has taught, are primarily relevant as aspects of human relationship, and the envy experienced by the therapist for S comprised one aspect of their relationship The therapist's envy was carefully restrained so that it did not represent a greater threat to the patient than his own inner conflicts and harmful introjects The therapist ultimately wished to share rather than to deprive, ultimately conveying to the patient that he was valuable even when he was not Messiah That part of the therapist that psychotically imagined itself redeemed by virtue of its contact with S.'s Messiah dissipated that Friday afternoon, and thus his depression involved to some degree a small loss of self If S remains sane because, unknown even to himself, he has internalized some fragment of an object that envied him and instilled in him a sense of realness superior to all the glories of kingship, then the therapist's loss was worthwhile SUMMARY Four illustrations have been presented which demonstrate the uses and 54 SPEROAND MESTER interpretations of envy in countertransference reactions to religious patients To be sure, envy reactions to any patient are significant, whether they simply distort the therapist's perception or contribute to a deeper understanding of the patient In the case of the religious patient, envy reactions in the therapist may serve as an additional instrumentality for understanding the ways in which the dynamic determinants of religious behavior and metaphor become enmeshed in and also transform the pathology of the patient as well as the therapeutic process itself Both the constructive and destructive object relational implications of envy must be borne in mind by the therapist in order to adequately explore the range of reciprocating forces between therapist and patient Primitive mechanisms such as projective identification and psychotic transference are particularly prone to evoke envy reactions of surprising intensities, yet an empathic attitude will usually enable the therapist to differentiate the true source of his envy as he more carefully comprehends the quality of object relational and dynamic needs such envy serves REFERENCES AIIphin, C (1982) Envy in the transference and countertransference Clin Soc Wk J., 10: 151-164 Anderson, R E (1987) Envy and Jealousy New York: Jason Aronson Bion, W R (1970) Attention and Interpretation New York: Basic Books Bradford, D.T (1984) The Experience of God New York: Peter Langs Buie, D (1981) Empathy J Am Psychoanal Assoc., 29: 281-299 Devereux, G (1978) Ethnopsychoanalysis Berkeley: University of California Press Epstein, L., and A Finer, Eds (1979).Countertransference New York: JasonAronson Frankel, S., and Sherick, I (1977) Observations on the development of normal envy 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In Spero, Psychotherapy of the Religious Patient, pp 8596 Klein, M (1957) Envy and Gratitude New York: Basic Books Langs, R (1976) The Therapeutic Interaction, Vol I New York: Jason Aronson COUNTERTRANSFERENCE ENVY 55 Little, M (1981) Transference Neurosis and Transference Psychosis New York: Jason Aronson Lovinger, R (1984) Working with Religious Issues in Psychotherapy New York: Jason Aronson McDargh, J (1983) Psychoanalytic Object Relations Theory and the Study of Religion Washington: University Press of America Meissner, W W (1984) Psychoanalysis and Religious Experience New Haven: Yale University Press Mester, R., and Klein, H (1981) The young Jewish revivalist Br J Med Psychol., 54: 294-306 Nathanson, D (1986) The empathic wall Psychoanal Study of the Child, 41: 171-187 Neubauer, P (1982) Rivalry, envy, and jealousy Psychoanal Study of the Child, 37: 121-134 Ostow, M (1965) Transference and countertransference in pastoral care J Past Care, 19:103-114 Peteet, J R (1981) Issues in the treatment of religious patients Am J Psychother., 35: 559-564 Peteet, J R (1985) Clinical intersections between the religion of the psychiatrist and his patients In Spero, Psychotherapy of the Religious Patient, pp 63-84 Sandier, J (1976) Countertransference and role responsiveness Int Rev PsychoAnal., 3: 43-47 Searles, H (1979a) Countertransference New York: Jason Aronson Searles, H (1979b) The analyst's experience with jealousy In L Epstein and A Finer (Eds.), Countertransference, pp 79-98 New York: Jason Aronson Searles, H (1979c) Jealousy involving an internal object In J LeBoit and A Capponi (Eds.), Advances in Psychotherapy of the Borderline Patient, pp 347-403 New York: Jason Aronson Shapiro, T (1974) The development and distortions of empathy Psychoanal Q., 43: 4-25 Spero, M H (1981) Countertransference in religious therapists of religious patients Am J Psychother., 35: 565-575 Spero, M H (1983) Religious patients in psychotherapy Br J Med Psychol., 56: 287-291 Spero, M.H (1986) Bibliography of sources dealing with psychotherapy of the religious patient Ramat Gan, Israel: Bar-Ilan University (Mimeograph) 1986a Spero, M.H., Ed (1985) Psychotherapy of the Religious Patient Springfield, II1.: Charles C Thomas Spero, M.H (1987) Psychotherapy, Religious Return, and Related Topics New York: Philosophical Library (in press) Stern, E M., Ed (1985) Psychotherapy of the Religiously Committed Patient New York: Haworth Press Weigert, E (1954) Countertransference and self-analysis of the psychoanalyst Int J Psycho-Anal., 35: 242-246 Will, O.A (1979) A comment on the professional life of the psychotherapist Contemp Psychoanal., 15: 560-576 Winnicott, D D.W (1949) Hate in the countertransference Int J Psycho-Anal., 30: 69-74 Wurmser, L (1981) The Mask of Shame Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press ... based on either an acceptance of or attempted denial of the patient' s wish to identify with the therapist; (3) denial of the patient' s hostility toward the therapist; (4) envy of the patient' s... within the patient, and the implications of the therapist's personal solutions to his own emotional needs for the reciprocal aspects of the patient' s experience With the religious patient, the therapist's... therapist -patient interaction may reveal a number of insights into COUNTERTRANSFERENCE ENVY 47 some aspect of the patient' s experience These include: (1) introjection of the patient' s envy of the therapist;