Heinrich Racker

Heinrich Racker (1910, Poland – 28 January 1961, Buenos Aires) was a Polish Argentine psychoanalyst of Austrian-Jewish origin. Escaping Nazism, he fled to Buenos Aires in 1939. Already a doctor in musicology and philosophy, he became a psychoanalyst, first under the direction of Jeanne Lampi-de-Groot, and later working with Ángel Garma and Marie Langer in Argentina. His most important work is a study of the psychoanalytic technique known as transference and countertransference, which was published for the first time in 1968.

His brother, Efraim Racker, was a famous biochemist.

Works

• 'Observaciones sobre la contratransferencia como instrumento técnico', Revista de psicoanálisis de la Asociacíon psicoanalítica argentina, 1951
• 'A contribution to the problem of countertransference', International Journal of Psycho-Analysis 34:4 (1953), 313-324.
• The meanings and uses of countertransference, Psychoanalytic Quarterly 26:3 (1957), 303-357.
• Psicoanálisis del espíritu; consideraciones psicoanalíticas sobre filosofía, religión, antropología, caracterología, música, literatura, cine, Buenos Aires: Nova. A.P.A., 1957
• Übertragung und Gegenübertragung : Studien zur psychoanalytischen Technik, 1959. Translated into English as Transference and countertransference, London: Hogarth Press, 1968. International psycho-analytical library, no. 73.

Further reading

• Transference and Countertransference; Publisher: Karnac Books, 1988, ISBN 0-9507146-9-0