As helping professionals working in end-of-life care, we are deeply affected by loss in our
personal as well as professional lives. In fact, many of us have chosen to work in end-of-life
care as a result of our own experiences with dying, trauma, and loss. Whether we are
physicians, chaplains, nurses, social workers, psychologists, physical therapists, or
occupational therapists, we have certain values and ethics, sociocultural influences,
personal life histories and memories, preconceived notions and assumptions, which we …

When the authors invited their contributing authors to write about their experiences and the
subtle ways in which they can get" hooked" when providing palliative and end-of-life care,
they discovered an abundance of preconceived notions and biases about the" C" word. The
authors were concerned that countertransference implied a distant, impersonal, even sterile
work style. It is true that the concept of countertransference was initially described by Freud
as an unconscious process involving the arousal of the analyst's unresolved conflicts and …