Lectures on Technique in Psycho-Analysis

THE TRANSFERENCE-NEUROSIS

You will have observed that our discussion of counter-resistance and counter-transference has been inserted between the subject of resistance in general and consideration of the 'transference-neurosis'. In adopting this course I was influenced by two considerations. The first was simply that an overhaul of counter-resistance is a useful corrective to any review of the patient's resistances. The second will, I imagine, serve the purpose of introducing the present theme. It is safe to say that at no stage of an analysis are the analyst's reactions, or his convictions about the fundamental truths of psycho-analysis, put to a more severe test than during that stage when the ground of the patient's conflict has been shifted, from external situations or internal maladaptations of a symptomatic sort, to the analytic situation itself. So much so that I feel justified in commencing the discussion by repeating that the main objective of counter-resistance differs in no essential from the main objective of resistance, viz. flight from any real appreciation of the Oedipus situation. The analyst has indeed one defensive advantage over the patient in this respect: should his sensitiveness to the Oedipus situation still persist to any extent, he can disguise this fact from himself by the supreme rationalization of being a professional psycho-analyst, i.e. one whose main activities will be in the direction of resolving Oedipus conflict in others. I say 'in the direction of' advisedly, because the intellectualistic view of analysis and interpretation is just as liable to prove a broken reed for the analyst as for the patient. It is not simply a desire to oust the parent that makes a patient attempt to conduct his own analysis or that stimulates him to 'take up analysis' professionally; he has in addition grasped the intellectualistic possibilities of defence which exist in analytic activity. In a word, for both analyst and patient the 'proof of th