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July 8, 2003. I would like to thank David Wolitzky for adding a positive view of Transference: Shibboleth or Albatross? (JAPA 51/2) to the positive evaluations of Eagle and Gross. Wolitzky agrees that I am “probably correct in claiming that analysts overstate the case for continuity based on early experience” and concludes that “this book succeeds admirably in clearly dispelling any simplistic, reductionistic, or linear notions of psychological causality” (pp. 713, 717). However, I do not accept some specific criticisms, quoted below, a few of which seem gratuitous.
“He believes that a focus on the here-and-now transference ‘may throw light, by extrapolation into the past, on the meaning of earlier experiences, including those of childhood, rather than the other way around.’ It is not clear what Schachter means by this” (p. 715).
My emphasis is not on the here-and-now transference but rather on here-and-now patient-analyst interactions. The point of my book is that these are different. Transference intrinsically involves the search for past origins; examining patient-analyst interactions eschews a search for past origins and substitutes exploration of the patient's present unconscious to elucidate the unconscious fantasies and defenses that influence the patient's behavior in the interactions. If specific conflicts do not emerge in patient-analyst interactions, they certainly must be explored in relationships outside the office. I accept that some patients do seem to be helped by “transference” interpretations—and others do not—though the role of suggestion in the therapeutic effect always has to be considered.
Let me explain again, as I do on pages 152, 153, and 179, about extrapolation to earlier figures. The one person about whom the patient reports interactions and responses, about whom the analyst has the greatest amount of valid data regarding the nature and behavior of that person, is the self-observant analyst him- or herself. Analysts have direct access to kn