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Freud’s The Dynamics of Transference One Hundred Years Later
Freud's ideas are seen as the core of existing theory, and
acceptable later developments are viewed as amplifications and
additions which are consistent—or at least not inconsistent—with
Freud's thoughts. Those who think in these terms will, when they
disagree with other writers, do so on the grounds that the others
have misunderstood, misinterpreted or misapplied Freud, and will
turn back to Freud's writings to find supporting evidence for their
own ideas. (Sandler, 1983, p 35)
All new clinical ideas, and perhaps especially the most
innovative ones, will invariably succumb to a narrowing-down
once they are domesticated as part of routine professional practice.
Not only does the new idea inevitably transmute into reified belief,
but the original context and meaning of the new conception is
typically lost as it enters mainstream usage. (P. Goldberg, 2010)
The centennial of The Dynamics of Transference is an apt occasion for revisiting
this foundational work on psychoanalytic technique and mutative process (Freud, 1912a).
Freud’s ten page paper has a powerful place in psychoanalytic history, and in our ideas of
what it is to be an analyst, to interpret, to practice psychoanalysis (Bird, 1972). In effect,
every psychoanalytic clinician and clinical theorist since the publication of The Dynamics
of Transference in 1912 has been influenced powerfully by its ideas. The central
conclusion of the paper concerning working with transference has become not only the
definition of psychoanalytic process, but often a working rule for practitioners. Much has
happened in our thinking in 100 years, so an examination of the paper’s inner structure,
its unrecognized elements, and its pervasive influence on our conception of analytic
process will be worth while.
Every historical study is affected by the viewpoint and experience of the historian.
My reading of Freud’s The Dynamics of Transference necessarily reflects both my
background and interests. My training at the Yale Psychiatry Department exposed me to
a combination of psychoanalytic ideas and social psychiatry. Under this influence I
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Freud’s The Dynamics of Transference One Hundred Years Later
undertook a research investigation of mutative process in social organizations like
hospitals, influenced by the pioneering work of Jerome Frank, Robert Lifton, and Daniel
Levinson, Stanton and Schwartz, and William Caudill (Almond, 1974). Most of my
career has been spent, however, as a practicing and teaching psychoanalyst. Training
gave me a strong grounding in American ego psychology; and subsequently I have been
influenced by the emergent theoretical contributions from relational analysis and neo-
Kleinian analysis. But in my writing I have been interested in the possible contributions
an interdisciplinary attitude can make, particularly in the study of psychoanalytic process
(e.g., Almond, 1995). The reader will thus find that I am looking at Freud’s discussion of
transference side-by-side with conceptual schemes in part drawn from social science. I
believe this bias, or interest, or filter offers a perspective that widens consideration of the
paper, and provides links between contemporary interest in the psychoanalytic
relationship with Freud’s use of metapsychology, particularly libido theory, in his
conceptions. I think that psychoanalytic clinical theorists are all currently attempting to
conceptualize the dyad, both interactionally and intrapsychically. Thus my viewpoint
reflects a contemporary concern, and, hopefully, contributes something new in this
excursion into a vital paper from our clinical psychoanalytic canon.
The paper will pursue several goals. I will review The Dynamics of Transference
through close readings of certain sections and points, including retranslations where I feel
Strachey’s English language choices distort Freud’s language or intent. More broadly, I
will also look at Freud’s conclusions, suggesting—with the benefit of hindsight—
correspondences with current thinking. We discover a subtle, complex clinical Freud
(Friedman, 2009). In particular, I will highlight how Freud drove towards unifying
conclusions, but at the same time described a disparate variety of clinical phenomena. I
will place the central points of the paper historically, both in Freud’s evolution, and in the
subsequent evolution towards the present pluralistic situation of clinical theory. Here we
will see that Freud encountered many of the challenges we experience today, noted them
in ways that have been clinically useful as well as fruitful for other theorists. I will argue
that there has been an evolution in the use of the paper’s central tenets – ideas that
provide a radical, liberating, and facilitating guide, can also become hackneyed rules for
doing analytic work. Finally, I will present ideas about how transference phenomena are
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Freud’s The Dynamics of Transference One Hundred Years Later
being discussed today increasingly as a particular type of dyadic human experience, for
which we have at this time only a limited theory and vocabulary.
To explore The Dynamics of Transference I will review and discuss five major
points Freud presents: 1) developmental origins and emergence of transference; 2)
significance of the special intensity of transference; 3) transference as resistance; 4)
types of transference; 5) the imperative to work in the transference—no “slaying in
effigy.” These will correspond roughly to the sequence of ideas in the paper. With each
section I will bring in comments on how the phenomena under discussion have
influenced clinical theory, and how we might view the issues today.
The Dynamics of Transference examined and discussed in detail
Development and emergence of transference
Freud begins with his purpose: to discuss how transference, in general, comes
about, and the part it plays in treatment. He proposes that transference has infantile
origins – that it becomes the specific manner in which the individual – in Strachey’s
translation – “has acquired a specific method of his own in his conduct of his erotic
life….” I would like to suggest the first of several alternate translations.1 As others have
noted (Bettelheim, 1983; Ornsten, 1992) Strachey favored technical, scientific-sounding
language that would enhance the legitimacy of psychoanalysis. He has rendered “…. wie
er das Liebesleben ausübt” as “conduct of his erotic life.” I believe “…how he practices
and lives his love” is closer to Freud’s intent, as well as being more literal. Although
Freud’s ideas are conceptualized in libido theory terms (Abend, 2010), his writing here is
fairly colloquial (“love life” vs. “erotic life”). When Freud wanted to say “erotic” in The
Dynamics of Transference he did so (e.g., p 105). With this condensed statement of the
idea of infantile neurosis Freud is referring to what would later evolve later in the
twentieth century as theories of object relatedness and attachment, amending the view of
motivation as purely erotic. I will return to the implications of this point.
In the sentence that follows, Strachey translates Freud’s phrase “Das ergibt
sozusagen ein Klischee (oder mehrere)…” as “This produces what might be described as
a stereotyped plate…” Strachey has taken Freud’s soft, borrowed French term
1 I take responsibility for the translations presented here. However, I would like to acknowledge the helpful
suggestions of Cordelia Schmitt-Hellerau, Ph.D. on translation issues. For a recent series of papers on
translation, see The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, Volume 91, Number 4 (2010).
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Freud’s The Dynamics of Transference One Hundred Years Later
“Klischee” and hardened it into an image that brings to mind a printing press, producing
copies over the years. A preferable translation might be, “This creates one or more
mental clichés…” What has been lost – or added – in translation is significant.
Strachey’s translation of this brief phrase set the English language impression about what
is established early, how fixed it is, and how it can be worked with clinically. In the next
paragraph Freud proceeds to describe how these mental contents affect what happens in
analysis. Unsatisfied desires turn towards the doctor. Here is what follows:
Unserer Voraussetzung gemäss wird sich diese Besetzung an
Vorbilder halten, an eines der Klischees anknüpfen, die bei der
betreffenden Person vorhanden sind, oder, wie wir auch sagen können, sie
wird den Arzte in eine der psychischen “Reihen” einfügen, die der
Leidende bisher gebildet hat. (Freud, 1912c, p 159)
Strachey translates this sentence as:
“It follows from our earlier hypothesis that this cathexis will have
recourse to prototypes, will attach itself to one of the stereotype plates
which are present in the subject; or, to put the position in another way, the
cathexis will introduce the doctor into one of the psychical ‘series’ which
the patient has already formed.” (Freud, 1912a, p 100)
My translation is:
“Our hypothesis, accordingly, will be that this wish to fill an
internal need will lead the person to connect the doctor with one of his
clichés, or, we could say, the sufferer will mold the doctor into one of the
psychological internal figures which he has previously formed.”
This version does not have the definitive, scientific sound of Strachey’s
(“cathexis,” “prototypes,” “series”) – but that is exactly the point. Through Strachey’s
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Freud’s The Dynamics of Transference One Hundred Years Later
translation we get a sense of something definitive clicking into place—the doctor
becomes a new version of the patient’s internal figure. We can easily read this version as
suggesting that the child forms one definitive model, and that this model is reiterated with
the analyst. But, as Freud had illustrated in “Little Hans”, children’s experience,
attachments, and internal models are complex, fluid, and multifaceted (1909). This
fluidity continues into adulthood: “…the patient’s illness…is still growing and
developing like a living organism.” (Freud, 1916-1917, p 444). The reader takes away
from Strachey’s rendering of this third paragraph the sense that transferences emerging in
psychoanalysis are of particular internal objects, chosen from a “reihe” (Strachey:
“series”; alternate here: “internal figures”). Strachey’s version establishes a tendency to
think of transference first as a specific, person-related phenomenon – “you act just like
my mother.” In fact, as Freud’s paper develops, transference comes to have meanings
more closely associated with the patient’s global experience of the analytic situation.
Freud’s developmental conceptualization and explanation of transference was
based on his earlier formulations of libidinal stages, including the importance of the
objects of energic investment for the individual’s sense of satisfaction, frustration,
fixation, and defense (1905a). This enriching view of childhood and its legacy stimulated
a great deal that followed, both in his own thinking, and in that of others.
Metapsychology expanded to include more detailed study of mental functions,
adaptation, affects, cognition, memory and internal object relations. Clinically, the idea
of a plastic, evolving psychology in the child led to child analysis, pioneered by Anna
Freud and Melanie Klein. Freud’s observations about childhood also led to research –
interest in observing children directly, in both natural and laboratory situations. Such
studies have created their own vast literature and theoretical models. They have also
brought psychoanalysis full circle, as the findings of observational work can be
juxtaposed to our existing intrapsychic models (Beebe and Lachmann; Seligman).
The intensity of transference
Freud turns to a question: “…we do not understand why transference is so much
more intense with neurotic subjects in analysis;” (p 101). Freud’s first assumption is that
there is a connection between the patient’s psychopathology (“Neurotic subjects”) and
intensity. Succeeding analysts were to learn that transference is a universal potentiality,
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Freud’s The Dynamics of Transference One Hundred Years Later
based on their experiences in training analyses, and with a variety of patients. Freud’s
way of suggesting the idea that he is talking about a universal is to note that transference
appears in hospital patients. But at this point in the paper the answer seems inadequate.
In fact, Freud gave a better answer to the question of intensity earlier in the paper:
insufficiently satisfied wishes seek an outlet in the present with the analyst. Freud sensed
that there was something about the analytic situation that promotes transference intensity,
and he addresses in other technical papers the ways in which the set up of analysis
facilitates this (1912c). In The Dynamics of Transference Freud does not look in the
direction of the relationship. In 1912 Freud was a depth psychologist; he had not yet
written about group psychology. When he did so in “Group Psychology and the Analysis
of the Ego” (1921), he acknowledged the object related side of transference. He says at
the outset of that paper, “In the individual’s mental life someone else is invariably
involved, as a model, as an object, as a helper, as an opponent; and so from the very
first[,] individual psychology….is at the same time social psychology as well.” (1921, p
69). In Chapter VIII, ‘Being in Love and Hypnosis’, Freud observes that in these states
the individual takes an other in idealized form to replace the ego. These ideas capture a
part of the observations that follow here, but do not apply them to the clinical situation.
In The Dynamics of Transference Freud was not inclined to consider the dyad itself as the
object of study – even though his observation of transference phenomena opened the door
to such a social/relational view. The following discussion offers a few illustrations of
how this crucial aspect of transference has been approached, using perspectives and
theories unavailable to Freud in 1912.
Nancy Chodorow, a sociologist-psychoanalyst, has recently drawn attention to the
late 19th-early 20th century social theorist Georg Simmel, who characterized the dyad
(2010). Dyads are “potentially anxious, vulnerable, self-protective and defensive”
(Simmel, quoted in Chodorow). Dyads feel “both endangered and irreplaceable….they
want to ‘see only one another.’” They “establish and overvalue exclusive, self-defining
practices and relational patterns.” What Simmel, by way of Chodorow, tells us as an
answer to Freud’s questions about intensity is that the private, dyadic set up of analysis
per se creates an emotional hot house. It is not necessarily the neurotic quality of the
patient, or the analyst’s instructions to the patient, or the opaque role the analyst plays.
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Freud’s The Dynamics of Transference One Hundred Years Later
The intensity of the psychoanalytic relationship and a number of other qualities we
regularly encounter in our work derive from intrinsic characteristics of dyads that are
secluded, that meet frequently, and that are not highly scripted.
We can look to the work of another early sociologist, Max Weber, for further
characterization of the processes that may suggest why the patient’s experience of the
analyst is so intense (2002). Weber referred to the special investment of a leader by a
follower with the term charisma, suggesting that certain powerful, sometimes unexpected
behaviors by the leader evoke strong emotional reactions in the follower. Charisma is
usually thought of in relation to leaders of mass movements. Weber said that charisma
could be “bureaucratized” in the form of office charisma, that is, a special property that is
inherent in established social roles, such as those of physicians and other healers. Phyllis
Greenacre, writing in fairly non-technical language says something similar:
“First as to the nature of the transference relationship itself: If two
people are repeatedly alone together some sort of emotional bond will
develop between them….This need for sensory contact, basically the
contact of warm touch of another body but secondarily experienced in the
other senses as well (even the word "contact" is significant), probably
comes from the long period of care which the human infant must have
before he is able to sustain himself….
“Even if the periods of repeated contact between two individuals
do not comprise a major part of their time, still such an emotional bond
develops and does so more quickly and more sensitively if the two persons
are alone together; i.e., the more the spontaneous currents and emanations
of feeling must be concentrated the one upon the other and not shared,
divided, or reflected among members of a group….This I consider the
basic transference; or one might call it the primary transference, or some
part of primitive social instinct. (Greenacre, 1956, p 671).”
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Freud’s The Dynamics of Transference One Hundred Years Later
Jerome Frank (1972), a psychoanalyst and social psychologist, employed a cross-
cultural approach in searching for universal elements in mutative processes. In
treatments varying from psychoanalysis to shamanistic healing he observed the
recurrence of specialness. The healer needs to believe in the power of his or her theory
and technique; the subjects must believe in the healer’s special capacities. Thus implicit
in Frank’s observations is Freud’s observation of transference intensity, and Freud’s
edging towards recognition that he was tapping into a certain type of healing dynamic.
More recently, I suggested that these special characteristics can be further characterized
as involving two sorts of relation – vertical (i.e., Weber’s charismatic), and horizontal, or
communitas, a term drawn from the work of the anthropologist, Victor Turner (Almond,
1974; Turner, 1969). In communitas, there is a specialness about the group as a whole.
Thus the psychoanalytic relationship has a charismatic quality that derives from
satisfactions, excitement, and potentiality of relating to someone in a position of
knowledge, authority, and transference-derived meaning. Power is an element here, not
based on authority in a coercive sense, but from the patient’s fantasies, wishes, and
idealizations. Communitas refers to a different aspect of an excited relational state – a
sense of shared humanity and shared feeling of participation in special activity (see the
first paragraph of Greenacre above) (Frank, 1974; Hayley, 1990). These observations
provide a wider human context for thinking about Freud’s discussion of the intensity of
the transference.
Transference as resistance
We come next to a second question Freud raises in his study of transference: why
does the resistance take the form of transference, or visa versa? Neurosis involves the
use of extra amounts of libido to remain unconscious. Further, when libido takes a
regressive course it strengthens infantile imagoes. Resistance arises from a retreat due to
frustration, but is even more powerfully strengthened by the “attraction of unconscious
complexes” (p 103). The appeal of reality diminishes in favor of substitutive
unconscious, fantasy gratification. This dual source of resistance helps explain a
subsequent point turns to the relation of resistance to transference. He first asserts that
analytic investigation triggers the emergence of elements of the “pathogenic complex”
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Freud’s The Dynamics of Transference One Hundred Years Later
into consciousness and will be “carried out.” The analyst seeks to make these conscious
so that they may be “serviceable to reality.” (p 103) Freud goes further: each step in the
struggle involves a compromise between the “pathological complex” and the “forces of
recovery.” Here we come to a central point: Freud concludes that some aspect of the
complexive material will find a basis in the figure of the doctor, and will be “carried out.”
(“herstellen” = “produced” is an alternate translation). That is, the doctor now will be
seen in terms that derive from the patient’s unconscious complexes. “We infer from this
experience that the transference-idea has penetrated into consciousness in front of any
other possible associations because it satisfies the resistance.” (p 103) Then, in a
footnote, he adds that the particular transference-resistance may not be central to the
patient’s pathology. What seems like a contradiction is clarified by the earlier point on
dual sources of resistance – the patient may develop a transference resistance that is not
central because he is devoted to avoiding consciousness of reality in general. Freud
continues that repeated encounters with the transference-as-resistance lead to a “situation
where every conflict has to be fought out in the sphere of transference.” (p 104)
It is likely that Freud here is describing his clinical experience (Friedman, 2010) –
patients balk at the unfolding of their unconscious motives, especially the pressure they
experience to make them conscious. They balk in the form of something they do with the
analyst. They stop associating, come late, mistrust the analyst, fall in love with him, and
so on. Freud links the analytic pursuit of unconscious ideas to the balking, making the
fateful connection that patients’ resistive behavior with him is also transference.
Next Freud turns to the question “How does it come about that transference is so
admirably suited to be a means of resistance?” (p 104) The explanation requires two
steps. He first suggests that it is embarrassing to acknowledge “proscribed wishes” to the
person they are now directed towards. With our current understanding of shame and
narcissistic vulnerability (Kohut, 1971; Morrison, 1989; Lansky, 1994) we might be
inclined to give this motive credit for stimulating resistance. Freud is doubtful, since he
feels that in a relationship of “affectionate and devoted dependence” patients would “feel
no shame in front of [the analyst].” (p 104-5) He moves to an anticipation of dual instinct
theory (1920) and suggests that two kinds of transference seek expression in the analytic
situation – erotic desires and aggressive (Freud says “negative”) desires that remain
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Freud’s The Dynamics of Transference One Hundred Years Later
unconscious, but seek expression. These less acceptable wishes – the negative and the
erotic aspect of positive desires – contribute to, and become manifest in resistance.
As analytic readers we know another part of the answer – we have “read ahead”
in Remembering, Repeating, and Working Through (Freud, 1914). Patients remember
their early solutions to the situations of childhood by repeating these patterns with the
analyst – a present day replay of what has been repressed. But this does not fully explain
why patients resist awareness, and why that resistance becomes part of the relationship.
The fact that there are hostile or erotic motives or feelings is not a full explanation.
Freud’s implicit idea is that these more driven, unconscious motives are evoked in the
analytic situation, leading to a compromise where the drive is both expressed and
opposed at the same time. The whole conceptual area of signal anxiety, ego defenses,
and major psychic structures (ego and super ego) in dynamic relation to drives was still
ahead. Here, we can see Freud on his way to structural theory, via the clinical experience
of resistance.
Psychoanalysis was to retain an intrapsychic view of transference and resistance
for most of the twentieth century. But Freud’s conceptualization can be seen in
retrospect as attempting to grapple with the interpersonal aspect of clinical experience.
An object relations view is implicit in Freud’s discussion, and there is reference to the
interpersonal at a number of points. Modern theory has returned to this aspect of
transference/resistance in a wide variety of ways; we now think about transference in a
theoretical context that goes far beyond libido theory. Now patient and therapist are
involved in a relationship in which the analyst is a participant, struggling with the
patient’s resistance to change. The acknowledgement of this struggle identifies a paradox
we live with today – that we try to maintain our uncritical neutrality, and encourage the
patient to self-observe in a similar way, yet recognize that both of us, motivated by
intrapsychic forces, are constantly being destabilized, de-centered interactionally by the
other. As indicated above, Freud was not a sociologist; when he observed what was
happening to him clinically he chose to use a word referring to an intrapsychic process,
but one that is also implicitly interactive. It was safer and more familiar to think of
transference as something in the patient (Szasz, 1963). The psychoanalytic movement
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Freud’s The Dynamics of Transference One Hundred Years Later
has spent much of the last century elucidating both the intrapsychic and interactional
sides of transference.
I believe, with Friedman, that Freud’s conceptualizing was an attempt to
understand clinical phenomena he began to recognize as his analytic experience grew
(2010). The Dynamics of Transference consists of a series of reflections on clinical
experience, described and explained. An important, recurring issue was that patients
often didn’t go along with Freud, either in the technical sense of free associating, or by
getting better. Further, they clearly engaged in a wide variety of behaviors that
confounded his free associational/interpretive technique. Such an experience could have
led Freud to despair of his technique, but he was masterful at turning defeat into victory,
into new psychoanalytic ideas. He had done this with the recognition of transference, in
the Dora post script (1905). There he acknowledged that his earlier ideas of mutative
action, emphasizing the interpretation of unconscious motives, especially through dream
interpretation, had led him to ignore a more critical issue in Dora’s treatment: the way in
which he had come to represent significant male figures whom Dora loved, feared and,
resented. Now he was seeing that patients avoid more generally, and found that he had to
deal with the avoidance. In The Dynamics of Transference Freud transmutes this
difficulty into a central process of psychoanalysis. Patients resist the desired processes of
free association and responsiveness to the analyst’s interpretations. So that is what must
be important – interpreting what is happening interactionally in the room – the crucial
issues, the “libido which has escaped from the patient’s conscious,” are at stake in the
struggle with transference.
Types of transference
Freud, in fact, describes in The Dynamics of Transference not a unified idea of
transference, but numerous categories, or dimensions of the phenomenon. These many
aspects of transference anticipate, and some have inspired, entire clinical lines of
thinking. In The Dynamics of Transference Freud writes about or alludes to:
•Transference to infantile objects of love, that is, patterns formed early in
life.
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Freud’s The Dynamics of Transference One Hundred Years Later
•Transference to one or more of a specific “psychical series,”, e.g., father-
imago, mother-imago, what we now would talk about as internalized object relationships.
•Transference as resistance to psychoanalytic work.
•Transference as universal phenomenon.
•Transference reflective of unconscious phantasy.
•Transference of love-hate polarity (ambivalence).
•Transference characterized by unconscious, repressed desires, vs.
transference based on conscious, modulated attachment.
•Transference in the here and now.
Each of these addresses a content or meaning set that can be found in the attributes a
patient finds in the analyst, or in the analytic experience as a whole. We could add to this
list further from the subsequent literature on transference – for example, that
transferences may involve parts of the self, e.g., the super ego, as when a patient hears
our comments as critical (Strachey, 1934). Or that transferences may take the form of
projective identifications, finding in the analyst extruded, unacceptable parts of the self
(Klein, 1946). Or that transference can even be aspects of experience that are deficient,
but yearned for (Kohut, 1971).
An additional answer to the question Freud raises about transference and
resistance comes in his delineation of positive and negative transferences. It is here that
he identifies an “unobjectionable” aspect of positive transference, the “vehicle of success
in psychoanalysis.” (p105) Elsewhere, Freud says this differently, referring to a “cure by
love.” This leads to an acknowledgement of the role of suggestion in analysis: “by
employing suggestion in order to get him to accomplish a piece of psychical work…”
(p106) But immediately after making the subdivision between friendly, affectionate
versus unconscious, erotic positive transference, Freud says that the benign part of
positive transference derives from libidinal sources. Succeeding generations have
debated this question, with those who feel the psyche can effectively separate parts of
positive transference developing conceptions of “a split in the ego,” “neutralized drives,”
“therapeutic alliance,” “working alliance,” “observing ego.” Other schools are skeptical
about there being any separable, ego-dominated aspect of transference. I addressed this
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Freud’s The Dynamics of Transference One Hundred Years Later
conundrum by reference to the role relationship in psychoanalysis. The analytic
relationship, like any other, has explicit and implicit role guidelines. The patient role is
highly complex – despite our general encouragement of “free association,” which has a
role-less sound (Almond, 1999). The patient learns the role during the analytic
experience. These internalized role capacities – to function in a social role is an ego skill
that mediates more elemental psychic capacities such as drives, anxiety, defense – make
possible less conflicted aspects of the analytic relationship, such as “alliance.”
A more implicit distinction made in The Dynamics of Transference is that
between transference and “the transference.” When we use the former we are generally
referring to some particular sort of overlay the patient is putting on the analyst. When
we use “the transference,” we are referring to the global experience of the relationship for
the patient – Greenacre’s “basic transference,” the charismatic significance of the analyst.
“The transference” also has a more interactional sound; it suggests an analytic third –
something beyond two individuals. So when my patient says, “You sound just like my
mother did when I was an adolescent,” we would say this is a transference. You could
say that this specific transference appears within “the transference.” In this instance we
are referring to the whole set of special features of the dyad that Simmel refers to – its
specialness, inward focus, exclusivity – the charisma/communitas qualities that are
universal to the psychoanalytic relationship. Here, my patient might say, “Treatment
feels like such a different part of my life.”
Despite the use of the same word, these are two distinct phenomena. Freud, who
was no doubt struck by the revelation of transference in both forms, and wished to
understand both, began the confusion. In The Dynamics of Transference he begins with
the general version (transference is an expression in the analytic situation of the early
mode of conducting one’s love life, i.e., a larger composite). Then he goes to variegated
transferences (imagoes, conscious/unconscious, positive/negative). Next, in discussing
resistance, he comes closest to blending the two types of transference, since resistance
can have both a specific quality and be a general phenomenon. By the end of The
Dynamics of Transference we are solidly in the realm of the transference with Freud’s
admonishment that [all] psychoanalytic work must be done in the here-and-now, i.e., a
rule applying to the relationship in general.
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Freud’s The Dynamics of Transference One Hundred Years Later
We are left with the complex heritage of Freud’s paper. Most analytic readers are
able to infer from usage, or from context, which meaning of transference is intended by
Freud, or by later writers. But the blurriness has led to a conceptual muddle in which an
extremely rich, variegated territory of phenomena is subsumed under one term. Yes, we
say “positive transference” to indicate the patient is loving, admiring, or desiring us. But
even with a qualifying adjective like “maternal,” transference can mean several things – a
transference of certain specific feelings derived from the relationship with the mother, a
transference towards the mother as held in fantasy, or a transference of dependent
feelings such as one might have towards a mother in general.
This penumbra of meanings has helped give rise to the variety of psychoanalytic
schools of thought, and particularly to their varied clinical emphases. Klein and her
followers were impressed by the defensive splitting-off of aggressive motives, emergent
in various transference configurations. The British Middle School analysts, and their
present-day successors, the developmental/attachment/relationalists, also emphasize early
object relations, but with more of an ear for multiple complexities of fit with the object.
Kohut introduced narcissistic, or, as he later put it, “selfobject” transferences, to capture
the experience of the analyst as a mirroring figure or a focus of admiration and
idealization. And so on. Every analyst who writes about clinical work has his/her own
experiences of patients’ transferences, and will describe and conceptualize them
differently, using both received and unique personal frameworks. All of this variability
leads to frequent encounters with “the narcissism of small differences” among us, which
in turn is a source of difficulty in discussion of psychoanalytic experience (Tuckett,
2007).
The imperative to work in the transference – No “slaying in effigie!”
The final two paragraphs of The Dynamics of Transference introduce “another
aspect of [the phenomenon of transference]” – what transference feels like for the analyst.
Here, Freud comes closest to telling us about his own subjective experience. “Anyone
who forms a correct appreciation of the way in which a person in analysis, as soon as he
comes under the dominance of any considerable transference-resistance, is flung out of
his real relation to the doctor, how he feels at liberty then to disregard the fundamental
rule of psychoanalysis…forgets the intentions with which he started the treatment, and
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Freud’s The Dynamics of Transference One Hundred Years Later
how he regards with indifference logical arguments and conclusions…” [italics added] (p
107) Freud’s indignation is palpable – but he immediately becomes the scientist, the
investigator: “….anyone who has observed all this will feel it necessary to look for an
explanation….” (p 107)
Freud’s explanation recaps an earlier point in an interesting way, one that
considers the sensitivities of the patient. In the course of “seeking out the libido which
has escaped from the patient’s conscious, we have penetrated into the realm of the
unconscious. (p107) “….The unconscious impulses do not want to be remembered in the
way the treatment [i.e., Freud] desires….” (p108) As in dreams, the impulses express
themselves in the language of the unconscious,
“…in accordance with the timelessness of the unconscious and its capacity
for hallucination….he seeks to put his passions into action without taking
any account of the real situation…. The doctor tries to compel him to fit
these emotional impulses into the nexus of the treatment and of his life-
history, to submit them to intellectual consideration and to understand
them in the light of their psychical value. This struggle (‘Kampf’)
between the doctor and the patient, between intellect and instinctual life,
between understanding and seeking to act, is played out almost
exclusively in the phenomena of transference. It is on that field that the
victory (‘Sieg’) must be won – the victory whose expression is the
permanent cure of neurosis….” (p 108)
We get a sense of Freud’s experience of psychoanalysis as a struggle: “compel,”
“submit,” “battle,” “victory.” Strachey has slightly exaggerated Freud’s claim for
analytic outcome – “dauernde Genesung” translates literally as “lasting recovery”
not “permanent cure” – but we can hear Freud imagining a therapeutic triumph at
the end of the treatment battle. And in the final sentences he recapitulates, first
referring to the difficulties of “controlling” (I would use “subduing”) the
transference, and then concluding that “….it is precisely they [the transference
resistances] that do us the inestimable service of making the patient’s hidden and
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Freud’s The Dynamics of Transference One Hundred Years Later
forgotten erotic impulses immediate and manifest.” (p 108) But the final
statement reverts to the language of battle – “For when all is said and done, it is
impossible to destroy (“erschlagen” = kill) anyone in absentia or in effigie.”
(p108)
We see here Freud at a crossroads. Until this point, and continuing to run
through the papers on technique is the picture of the analyst as the surgeon,
dispassionately interpreting aspects of the patient’s psychology. But in these final
paragraphs we sense the process as something different. The analyst is in the
affective, interactive here and now with the patient, mixing it up. Interpretation is
the vehicle for what Freud depicts as a struggle, an intense emotional engagement
with the patient.
Discussion
Loadstar, Touchstone, Shibboleth
How have the concepts of transference put forward in The Dynamics of
Transference enabled psychoanalysts to do their work and build their theories? How
have Freud’s ideas become a measure of these theories’ validity, conferring legitimacy?
And in what ways has The Dynamics of Transference limited psychoanalytic thinking and
practice by prescribing what is “correct,” or being interpreted to proscribe technical
positions that are “not correct?” Strachey’s translation of “Klischee” as “stereotype
plate” provides a useful example of these issues. The idea that children actively adapt
their mode of loving to the personalities of those close to them has been of tremendous
value to psychoanalysis. The concept of infantile neurosis, with its evocative suggestion
that the child remains in the adult, stimulated psychoanalytic developmental study. The
idea here, and in the developmental theory of Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality
(Freud, 1905), is an implicit statement of transference neurosis. Analysts constantly mull
on the question, “What internally-carried, deeply established pattern of relating (or
wishes/fantasies about relating) does this material fits into?” Yet Strachey’s rendering as
“stereotype plate” edges us towards thinking about this in an oversimplified way, a one-
to-one equivalence of present and past. So as a lodestar, the idea of the infantile neurosis
gives us an awareness and curiosity about the patient’s unconscious processes; as a
touchstone we may be guided by the idea that transference allows us to hear the past in
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Freud’s The Dynamics of Transference One Hundred Years Later
present material. And as a shibboleth we might interpret every utterance as a repetition
of childhood experience, an attitude towards psychoanalysis we certainly see taken in the
popular press.
Lodestar: A star that leads or guides. (Webster’s Dictionary, 1989)
After 100 years of clinical practice psychoanalysts have recognized that the
analytic situation is often confusing, emotionally fraught, and disorienting (Poland,
1996). Finding guidelines for how to be with patients is difficult – every patient, every
analyst, every dyad, every hour is unique. Adapting to this requires that the analyst work
hard to orient and respond in the most useful way possible. One valuable reference point
available to an analyst is transference – despite the fact that determining transference in
the moment may be subjective and complex. Transference sits in the analyst’s mind like
the North Star in the night sky, not a perfect compass point, but a reassuring and enduring
beacon. Our awareness of transference says, “There is something else going on here,
something special, something old and new at the same time, something that probably has
to do with the patient’s feelings and wishes and defenses. And furthermore, that
something will be useful to understand, think about, and use in responding to the patient.”
In contemporary terms we understand this in a number of ways. Writers after
Freud have used various ideas to capture the sense of more pre-existing, enduring aspects
of personality. We would now consider both the patient’s “klischee’s” and the
transference-resistances encountered in analysis to be admixtures of character, defense,
and unconscious fantasy (or phantasy), emerging in the here-and-now. Recognizing, as
Freud did, the presence of temperamental and development elements in the transference
(1912a, footnote, p 99), today we think of transference as the totality of what is
happening in the analytic moment (Joseph, 1985). In fact, we now consider an even
greater level of complexity, factoring in the analyst’s countertransference contribution
(Jacobs, 1991) along with the idea that each party in the dyad exerts influence on the
other in a continuing way (Beebe and Lachmann, 2002).
Stern et al (1998) suggest that the fate of the dyadic process depends on
successful negotiation of “moments of meeting.” These moments involve non-conscious,
17
Freud’s The Dynamics of Transference One Hundred Years Later
procedural reactions and responses of both members of the dyad. If this is the case, it
may be important that the analyst have a sense of orientation. Understanding that the
situation is complex does not make life any easier for the analyst; she must make
technical decisions, knowing that she does not comprehend much of what is going on.
Transference focus can help here by organizing the data of analytic experience. But the
analyst may also use transference to hide behind, to create a model of the situation that
reduces anxiety (Szasz, 1963). This possibility brings us to the next view of The
Dynamics of Transference.
Touchstone: A test or criterion for determining the quality or genuineness of a
thing (Webster’s Dictionary, 1989)
The ideas in The Dynamics of Transference have at times in the past 100 years
been taken as defining psychoanalysis. Freud himself said that to be analysis the process
must involve the interpretation of transference and resistance (1914b). This core then
became a sine qua non for analytic process. Yet a variety of schools do not subscribe to
this requirement, or they discuss the crucial analytic phenomena in different language. I
am thinking of Self Psychology, with its emphasis on empathic listening and recognition
of empathic failures as central to mutative process (Schwaber, 1983; Kohut, 1984). Or
Control-Mastery Theory, which is based on Freud’s ego psychology, and sees the patient
as unconsciously planning his own cure, rather than resisting to protect from exposure of
his unconscious impulses (Weiss and Sampson, 1986). Or Relational Theory, which
deemphasizes transference in favor of a focus on interaction processes as co-
constructions within the dyad (Hoffman, 1998).
I suggest that psychoanalysts adopt theoretical schools or positions for two
reasons beyond the clinical helpfulness of the ideas in themselves (Almond, 2003). First,
theories provide a basis for group formation, cohesion, and affiliation. We know from
the history of psychoanalysis how large a part theory affiliation has played; studies of this
have tended to emphasize the negative effects of theoretical grouping (Kirsner, 2000), but
in the hot house of process, having a reference group of peers provides a reassuring hold,
a reference point, for the working analyst. The second utility of having a theory is its aid
18
Freud’s The Dynamics of Transference One Hundred Years Later
in orienting the analyst in the clinical moment. Particularly, it helps the analyst resist
more automatic reactions to the pressures of the patient. Theory provides an orientation –
what I referred to as a lodestar – for clinical experience. Put together, the analyst in the
clinical moment experiences theory – usually present at a preconscious level – as the
reassuring presence of analytic identity (Schafer, 1983; Kantrowitz, 1993; Almond,
1995). The ideas of transference, resistance, and their combination, transference-
resistance, provided this sort of orienting comfort and support for much of the twentieth
century, especially if we include the concept of conflict that is implicit in the clinical
observation of resistance (Calef, 1972; Brenner, 1982).
This clinical theory, codified, became a touchstone for analysts in the generations
after Freud.2 Influenced by the emphasis on interpretation by the analyst that was the
center of Freud’s early technical stance, the pattern became one of looking for the most
salient transference-resistance. Cooper refers to this as the historical model of
transference, contrasting it with a modern model in which transference is a new process
(1987), akin to Loewald’s “new object” experience (1960). In the modern version of
transference the analyst is immersed in the immediacy of the psychoanalytic experience.
Neo-Kleinian technique, for example, favors interpretation of the patient’s motives as
wishes to impact the analyst in one way or another. Interpretations are guided by the
analyst’s countertransference affects and ideas, which reflect projective identifications
from the patient. Relationally based psychoanalysts also are likely to interpret the
tensions between the transference and the “real” relationship. And contemporary
Freudians, through the growing recognition of countertransference and enactment, also
emphasize here-and-now interpretations of the interphase between subjective,
intrapsychic life and real, external experience.
Cooper’s modern transference, reflected in these contemporary theories, is
foreshadowed in Freud’s emergent awareness of transference-resistance. He sees that the
struggle for change takes place in the present, not through reconstruction of the past.
Freud’s dragon-slaying metaphor has clued us to his affective engagement, even while he
is portraying the analyst as interpreter and explainer. In the clinical evolution of
2 Max Weber, writing about the evolution of new, inspirational organizations, refers to the
“beaurocratization of charisma” as succeeding generations of leaders attempt to create a cohesive group of
ideas and organizational structures (2002).
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Freud’s The Dynamics of Transference One Hundred Years Later
psychoanalysis a view of analyst as interpreter has been foremost. Only in developments
of recent decades have clinical theorists attended more directly to the affectively engaged
dyad that is implicit in Freud’s “battle” with the resisting patient. Ironically, the
touchstone significance of The Dynamics of Transference prevented early generations of
analysts from seeing that Freud knew about the importance of the here and now
engagement. His language, including the “surgical” image for practitioners elsewhere in
the technical papers, conspired to delay appreciation of a complexity and subjectivity we
now recognize.
The Dynamics of Transference also strongly suggests, for the first time, that the
patient is the source of initiative in the process. From the point at the outset of the paper
that the patient has developed “klischees” for practicing (“üben”) his love life, to the
argument that there are unfulfilled wishes or fantasy scenarios the patient wants to enact,
to the patient’s seizing on an aspect of the analyst for setting up a transference-resistance
– in each of these depictions of the clinical situation the patient is an active, initiating
author of the process. Subsequent clinical theories have expanded this idea. Some
emphasize the repetition of old fantasy solutions, which contain both defenses against
anxiety and substitutive gratifications. Others posit the patient’s desire to overcome old
fears and convictions. But with The Dynamics of Transference the patient is no longer a
passive reactor to the analyst’s interpretation of reconstructed experience.
Shibboleth: A custom or usage regarded as a criterion for distinguishing
members of a group. (Webster’s Dictionary, 1989)
Psychoanalytic concepts shift in their function as they are used repeatedly
(Sandler, 1983). When new, they enable the user to understand and act in innovative and
more effective ways. As use becomes routinized the idea may take on additional
reassurance and identity functions, as I have suggested with touchstone. At some point
the concept’s function may rigidify, becoming a rule and a code word for maintaining
peer acceptability. With The Dynamics of Transference this has happened in at least two
respects: 1) equating of transference and resistance with analytic process; 2) no “slaying
in effigy.”
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Freud’s The Dynamics of Transference One Hundred Years Later
American psychoanalysis was dominated by various forms of ego psychological
thinking roughly for the fifty years from 1950 to 2000. With an underpinning of libido
theory, the emphasis was on conflict and defense, all manifest in the treatment in the
form of resistances. Although many different clinical styles and techniques existed side
by side, legitimacy was conferred by remaining under the umbrella of these ideas. As
analysts saw more and more patients whose central tendencies seemed to be dyadic,
“primitive,” or narcissistic, they turned to theory models that were more helpful in such
treatments. Thinking in terms of every significant manifestation in the relationship as
resistance went from enabling to limiting; “transference/resistance” became a shibboleth,
and many analysts espoused Klein, Bion, Winnicott, Kohut, or the relational theorists.
Another shibboleth in The Dynamics of Transference has developed from the
“slaying in effigy” of the paper’s final sentence. Here is an idea that has deeply enriched
psychoanalytic technique; but making transference interpretation into the be-all-and-end-
all reduces technique to a stereotype. Today most analysts take a nuanced view – that the
most intense affect, the “point of urgency” may be in the here and now relationship, or
may lie in outside situations. Equating technique with transference interpretation can
become a form of analytic coercion, or analytic narcissism (Wilson, 2003; Chodorow,
2010). Discussion of the here-and-now analytic relationship may occur or not, may be
initiated by the analyst or the patient, or the analytic scene may be the arena in which
issues vital to the patient are discussed. Going back to Simmel’s observations about the
dyad, we can ask whether a function of repeated transference interpretation may be
procedural – an instructive invitation to the patient to come closer, to occupy a place in
the dyad more intently, and to talk and think and feel more about the dyadic experience.
And since the formation of an intense bond – the transference, a basic transference, a
charismatically imbued relation – may be a central aspect of mutative action, such cueing
need not be dismissed as overly directive (Freud’s “suggestion”). In any case, I suggest
that taking Freud’s prescription about the importance of dealing with transference and
resistance in the here-and-now can be done in different manners: a shibboleth way, in
which the analyst constantly tries to decode the every patient utterance for hidden
transference meaning, or an a lodestar way, as one of the wide variety of ways central
issues manifest in analysis.
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Freud’s The Dynamics of Transference One Hundred Years Later
Transference -- from unitary to dyadic
How do we see transference today? I cannot elaborate here the rich literature of
each of the evolutions of psychoanalytic thinking reflected in the multiple schools of
today, and the complex intellectual history of each. But each involves a continuously
more complex, nuanced understanding of the phenomena Freud discussed. In the case of
transference, our clinical, as well as theoretical subtlety has hopefully increased as more
and more aspects of mind are investigated. Looking with lenses refined by 100 years of
clinical study, we can see that The Dynamics of Transference contains an early allusion to
interactional clinical phenomena that then had to be rediscovered and elaborated. Freud
described what he encountered using psychoanalytic language he had available, before
the development of structural theory, modern ego psychology, affect theory, object
relations theory, Lacanian theory, self psychology, relational theory, or systems theory.
The term Strachey translated as “transference” – “übertragung” – a gerundive
form of the verb meaning to “transmit” or “transfer” – suggests present action. We are
more familiar with the sense as referring to the intrapsychic transfer of meaning from a
past object to the analyst as I have suggested grew from the “stereotype plate” translation.
But in The Dynamics of Transference Freud brings transference into the analytic present
by recognizing that the patient acts towards the doctor according to the internal patterns
of both the past and the present need to resist. We can see how the paper’s authoritative
stance circumscribed clinical theories, favoring certain aspects of technique and
discrediting others. The privileging of interpretation, especially of transference, has led
to large blind spots, devaluing of the role of support (Wachtel, 2008), of more complex
patterns, such as “corrective emotional experience” (Renik, 1993), of psycho-education,
or of behavioral influence (Jones and Pulos). Freud alluded to these aspects of process
with his reference to the unobjectionable positive transference, and the inevitable place of
suggestion; presumably the analyst does things to facilitate these aspects of the
relationship. Certainly, memoirs by Freud’s former patients are replete with descriptions
of his non-interpretive, reassuring, supportive side (Lohser and Newton, 1996). Thus a
more nuanced view of transference from the technical side would study the interplay of
support and interpretation. Even this statement is a vast oversimplification of the
multiple interwoven elements of the relationship.
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Freud’s The Dynamics of Transference One Hundred Years Later
“No slaying in effigie” has also made it more difficult to characterize mutative
process, Freud’s exhortations in The Dynamics of Transference – a priori statements of
how analysis works – tend to crowd out empirical observation. Leaders of
psychoanalytic schools tend to repeat Freud’s declarative style. This also makes it
difficult to give neutral reception to empirical observation of clinical work that could lead
to more complex clinical-theoretical structures. For example, recent clinical research
suggests that psychodynamic processes operate in non-psychoanalytic techniques such as
cognitive-behavioral therapy, and that psychoanalytic treatment frequently includes CBT-
like processes (Jones and Pulos, 1993). In other words, the question to ask may not be
“What is the right way to analyze?” but “What happens in successful analyses? ”
I have tried to underscore and clarify several major themes in The Dynamics of
Transference: “transference” versus “the transference;” transference as a special, dyadic
process; resistance as both an umbrella term for the opposition to change, and as
expression of the personality in the analytic process; and, finally, the possibility that there
may be a shift in usefulness over time. The place today of the ideas in The Dynamics of
Transference is now very much a matter of how we think about psychoanalytic process.
My impression is that – despite what seems at times a cacophony different voices – a
consensus is emerging about process, a picture with an emphasis different from Freud’s,
although retaining his insights. I have tried to show that this latter picture is implicit in
Freud’s description and discussion. This picture is more than that indicated by “two-
person” psychology – it includes the dynamic interaction between the two individual
psychologies, a social psychology. Interaction is described differently by different
schools of thought; but these differences have to do with emphasis on different aspects of
a complex process, different perspectives and languages, and different theoretical
histories.
As Greenacre indicated, two individuals form a bond through regular meeting
times and an analytic role that tilts the situation by emphasizing the mental state and
contents of one member. Each party to the dyad brings a psychic inside that includes
temperament, constantly reworked, largely unconscious, old experience
(nachträglichkeit), current subjectivity, and perceptions of the other. Each is engaged in
continuous “action” triggered by the intersection of all of these factors. Action is the
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Freud’s The Dynamics of Transference One Hundred Years Later
contribution each makes to the inter-actional process that, in a circular manner is
constantly influencing both parties, including altering their internal equilibria. So the
process is one that goes on through time. This is where the possibility of change comes
in; the dynamic in the system can shift at any point. Stern et al, who employ a systems
model along these lines, propose that there are long periods of relative stability when the
two parties are engaged in “going on being.” (Stern et al, 2010) Then, through
opportunities created by variations in the reactions of one or the other, an instability is
introduced that may lead to a permanent change in the full system, and therefore in the
psyche of the patient (a “moment of meeting”). This is what Freud was attempting to
capture by adding resistance to the discussion of transference. It was also why he spoke
of the transference, and why that aspect of the term persisted. Many different terms have
been used to characterize elements of this complex process of interactiveness: projective
identification; transference/countertransference enactment; empathic failure and repair;
the relationship; the analytic third; intersubjectivity.
The idea that the psychoanalytic process might be viewed as a special kind of
relationship is gradually emerging from the weight of history. Both transference and the
transference have been helpful in alerting us to a special level of meanings in our practice
of analysis. But the word transference may be overstaying its time. What has long been
a lodestar has progressed to being a touchstone, and then a shibboleth. Can we get along
without it? Perhaps not yet, but studies like those of the Boston Psychotherapy Change
Study Group that address the microstructure of interaction begin to move us to new levels
of psychoanalytic phenomena (1998; 2010). It will take time, and new conceptions to
capture the microstructure of interaction. But we acknowledge this level constantly with
our patients, and in collegial discussions when we note the subtle phenomenology of
moments or patterns in our analytic hours. It remains for the next century to elaborate
and name these phenomena.
One challenge is the preference among both clinical theorists and analytic
students for simple, reductive conceptual systems. We see this tendency in The
Dynamics of Transference when Freud, creating a framework for understanding his
patients’ uncooperativeness invokes two different strategies, one condensing, the other
differentiating. His merger of transference and resistance, though undoubtedly accurate
24
Freud’s The Dynamics of Transference One Hundred Years Later
in many clinical moments, reduces the conceptual framework to one idea. On the other
hand, his elaboration of positive and negative transference, and separation of
unobjectionable from erotic positive transferences began a recognition of process that
allows us to listen, think, and speak with increasing subtlety. The large variety of
theoretically differing psychoanalytic schools that have emerged over the past one
hundred years reflects additions to the vocabulary available for thinking about clinical
phenomena. The tendency for each school to claim that its particular contribution can
encompass the whole of psychoanalytic experience reflects again the condensing,
shibboleth problem (Kirsner, 2009). In other words, advancing clinical theory requires a
willingness to hold in mind a complex set of variables and combinations.
A separate question for the future is whether we can utilize the sort of
microscopic perspective provided by developmentally oriented observers like Stern et al,
or other psychoanalytic researchers (e.g., Jones, 2000; Beebe and Lachman, 2002; Bucci,
1994; Knoblauch, 2011). Here, the issue is one of translation of ideas from one realm to
another. Taking Stern’s ideas as an example, the application for clinical situations would
involve a new vocabulary describing microtemporal dyadic, rather than enduring
intrapsychic phenomena. Something like a vocabulary of dance steps that would depict
each couple’s behavior, rather than each individual’s. This would lead to a set of terms
for psychoanalytic Fox Trots, Waltzes, Rumbas, and so on (Bucci, 2011, and Knoblauch,
2011, both use dance metaphors for psychoanalytic process). Such a vocabulary does not
exist in psychoanalysis at this point. Many clinical analysts understandably shy away
from complex nomenclatures like DSM, arguing that any such categorization loses
information about individuals because people are unique. The same reaction may greet
attempts to describe dyads. A middle road is illustrated by Jones, who uses empirical
analysis combined with clinical interpretation to create unique characterizations for
dyads, giving each a particular descriptive name (Jones, 2003; Katzenstein, 2005).
Finally, we need to distinguish more clearly in our usage between transferences
and the transference. These are two different animals; each has its long history in
psychoanalytic discussion. A great variety of transferences have now been described,
and we can now define this term as referring to states and relating tendencies that the
patient (or the analyst, as countertransferences) may manifest and experience. The
25
Freud’s The Dynamics of Transference One Hundred Years Later
transference refers to a dyadic situation in which two people have joined in the sort of
special relatedness that Simmel describes, and that can be further characterized as having
special, charismatic properties that could be explored further.
Summary
Publication of The Dynamics of Transference was a pivotal moment in the
evolution of clinical psychoanalytic theory. Freud’s essay shows us how he learned from
experience, and how he evolved new ideas to grapple with unexpected phenomena, such
as patients’ resistance to working in the way he originally thought best. Freud enunciated
a principle that has endured the century since his paper, in pointing out that the way
patients resist is to engage in a transference-based interactional rendering of the
psychoanalytic relationship. His argument that this process must be interpreted in order
to overcome the resistance was enabling to the first generations of analysts (a lodestar),
but has been taken as the calling card of psychoanalysis, making it an overly rigid dictum
(a touchstone or shibboleth).
As a depth psychologist, Freud conceptualized the phenomena of analysis in
intrapsychic terms; “transference” alludes to the dyad, but describes the psychology of
one member, hence “countertransference” to account for the subjectivity of the other
party, and the awkward “transference-countertransference” for the dyadic patterns. One
way to describe the evolution of psychoanalytic clinical thinking in the century since The
Dynamics of Transference is as a gradual move towards thinking about the dyad. Further
conceptualizations along that line lie ahead.
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Freud’s The Dynamics of Transference One Hundred Years Later
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