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As for transference it is altogether a curse … nor have I overcome the countertransference.-Freud
THE FACT THAT IN OUR DAILY WORK we are increasingly being confronted with narcissistic problems in our patients must necessarily change our approach and result in a different clinical picture of the analysand and the analyst within the psychoanalytic situation. Narcissistic problems influence our technique, particularly our handling of the transference: indeed, they demand serious thought about the very concept of transference. This concept and those related to it, such as positive and negative transference, transference neurosis, and countertransference, as well as descriptions of the therapeutic process, were first introduced by Freud (Breuer and Freud, 1895); (Freud, 1905), (1912a), (1912b), (1915) during the period when his thinking was based essentially on experiences with patients suffering from hysteria and obsessional neurosis, the so-calld transference neuroses, which Freud distinguished from narcissistic neurosis. In other words, the investigation into sexuality and object relations and their clinical manifestations in the Oedipus complex were then of foremost importance. Such was the situation before Freud's repetition compulsion (1920), his dual theory of instincts (1920), (1923), his personality concept (the structural viewpoint, 1923), and preoedipal development