I’m a client so I would give more weight to any answers provided by therapists on this matter.
Transference from the client towards the therapist should not be a concern or weigh heavily or at all in this scenario. It’s pretty well expected that a client will develop transference towards the therapist. That transference can come in all flavors, but I’m assuming you mean romantic transference in this case. Well, that is common and therapists who are trained to work with transference do welcome it and work with it for the client’s benefit. The understanding is that the client will not be given the opportunity to act on any such feelings. There will be no dating the therapist no matter what the client feels towards the therapist. That lack of possibility is a huge part of what makes talking about and exploring the feelings safe for the client.
Given that many clients do develop transference towards the therapist, it should be assumed that any situation in which a therapist develops romantic countertransference towards the client, there’s already that romantic transference going on.
For this reason among others, therapists are expected to work through whatever feelings are stirred up in them by their clients in a healthy way. They can do this in supervision groups or in one on one supervision. They can also do this in their own therapy. It’s highly recommended that therapists also be in therapy. Either way, they have options and outlets for processing through their feelings for their clients, especially the ones that could be troubling if either ignored or acted on.
Until feelings are acted on, they remain just feelings. Just because a therapist feels something for the client does not mean any wrongdoing has been done, nor does it mean drastic measures need to be taken. It’s just feelings. It is the therapist’s responsibility to recognize and work through those feelings and do all possible to ensure those feelings do not get in the way of the therapy for the client. Therapists are human too, and feelings might persist and the therapist can work with those feelings in a way that would be helpful to the client. As long as therapists work with their own feelings in healthy ways, it shouldn’t be a problem for them to have feelings. In fact, that’s part of being human. It’s what they do with feelings that makes a difference.
The only time a therapist’s countertransference would become a problem that might merit making a change in the therapy (such as a transfer of the client to a different therapist) is if the therapist is not appropriately dealing with his feelings. If that’s the case with his romantic countertransference, it’s likely also the case with plenty of other feelings and it’s likely his failure to deal with them in a healthy way has already compromised the therapy, in which case yes, we have a problem, possibly many problems.
But simply having feelings is not a cause for taking drastic measures. It’s a great feature of being human. And as long as the humans are taking responsibility for their own feelings it’s all good. The client is in therapy to learn how to take appropriate responsibility for her own feelings including transference towards the therapist. The therapist is supposed to already know how to do that and model it for the client.
I suspect this very dynamic has gone on in fleeting ways many many times in therapy, but the client never knows it because the therapist simply deals with his feelings as they come up and that’s how it should be.