The unconscious changes in the doctor which the patient thus brings about are well known to many psychotherapists; they are disturbances, or even injuries, peculiar to the profession, which illustrate in a striking way the patient’s almost “chemical” influence. One of the best known of them is the counter-transference which the transference evokes. But the effects are often more subtle, and their nature is best conveyed by the old idea of the demon of sickness. According to this a sufferer transmits his disease to a healthy person whose powers subdue the demon—but not without a negative
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