As I noted in a recent posting, Freud's comments to Jung about psychoanalysis as a cure through love, referred to the love of the analysand for the analyst, not the analyst's love for the patient.  This point was underscored by Tom Federn and is also noted in the minutes of the psychoanalytic society in Vienna.  The qualitative research on recovery in schizophrenia conducted by Larry Davidson and colleagues in New Haven (Davidson, L. 2003 Living Outside Mental Illness: Qualitative Studies of Recovery in Schizophrenia. NY: New York University Press) also pointed to the importance of the patient's experience of her/himself as having a positive impact on others (as noted by Harold Searles and Ann Silver).

Winnicott wrote of countertransference hate and how the analyst expresses it (I am not sure I would agree with all of his points on this, e.g., charging fees and ending the hour as necessarily hateful acts).  Perhaps, countertransference love is partly in containment, reliability, integrating hate with love, etc. and arises (partly) in response to transference love.  For myself, I can better withstand transference hate when I can see where it is coming from, including my part in it.  As Post-Kleinian Leon Grinberg pointed out, the term 'negative' is unfortunate, for it could very well be a positive development in the analysis and can be an expression of the patient's autonomy.  Countertransference love may also include the recognition and acknowledgement of the analyst's genuine dependence upon the patient.  (I believe this is particularly important in working with patients characterized by the term "destructive narcissism" -- persons who are excessively counterdependent and defensively self-sufficient -- at the same time as struggling with autistic isolation).  As Gaetano Benedetti noted, the analyst's counteridentification with the patient's catastrophies allows for the patient to more fully identify with the analyst (Benedetti, G. (1987).  Psychotherapy of schizophrenia. New York: New York University Press; Benedetti, G. & Furlan, P.M. (Eds.). (1993).  The psychotherapy of schizophrenia. Seattle: Hogrefe & Huber).  Benedetti was well aware of the patient's attachment to the persecutor within which resists the empathic stance of the analyst.  In a recent session, a patient of mine said that he fights off attempts to help him because he is against himself.

Countertransference love is the creative variant of the persecutory projective identification.

Brian Koehler