Judd Marmor

It is a great pleasure for me to be on this panel where psychiatrists representing various schools of thought can exchange views on a subject of interest to all of them. One of the more regrettable trends in American psychiatry in the past two decades has been the growing divisiveness and isolation which has been developing among the representatives of differing theoretical points of view. The Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis is to be congratulated on its effort, as represented by this symposium, to counteract this unhealthy tendency.

Any discussion of the patient-physician relationship in dynamic psychotherapy inevitably brings up two terms which have come from psychoanalytic theory—transference and counter-transference. Unfortunately there is much confusion about these terms because they are sometimes used in a highly specific sense, while at other times they are used very loosely. Thus the term “transference” may be employed to include all of the emotionally-tinged attitudes that a patient may have toward a therapist. If he likes the therapist, it is called “positive transference,” if he dislikes him it is “negative transference.” Such use of the term transference leaves no room for the realistic aspects of the patient-physician relationship. If a patient reacts positively to a therapist who is friendly and warm, or negatively to one who appears cold or disinterested, this is not necessarily a transference reaction. It may be, and often is, a perfectly valid and realistic judgment on the part of the patient.