You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Transference may be said to be an attempt of the patient to revive and re-enact, in the analytic situation and in relation to the analyst, situations and phantasies of his childhood.2 Hence, transference is a regressive process.
Transference develops in consequence of the conditions of the analytic experiment, viz., of the analytic situation and the analytic technique. Among these one may mention:
1the fact that the patient suffers and comes to the analyst in expectation of help—a fact that puts him in the position of a child turning to an adult;
2the unilateral exposure, by the patient, of the most intimate aspects of his life—putting him in the position of the child that is nude in the presence of adults;
3the analytic rule of free associations, requiring the patient to give up, as far as possible, goal-directed behaviour and defences against the rise of impulses—a rule which changes the balance between id and ego and thereby favours (temporary) regressions;
4the reassurance, explicit or implied, offered by the analyst, against the anxiety provoked by the rise of unconscious material, thus putting the patient in the position of a protected child; and
5the passivity of the analyst, i.e. the fact that the analyst does not respond to the patient's attitudes on the level of reality and does not play out his own personality so that the patient's phantasies are not stopped prematurely by counteractions from the outside world.
As the full development of transference is the consequence of analytic situation and analytic technique, changes of this situation or technique can considerably alter the transference phenomena. Among the means of influencing it are the confrontation of the patient's phantasies with reality, and analytic interpretations.
This, as I understand it, is the subject of our discussion. How far should the regressive process of transference be encouraged or permitted to go on; and at what point and by what means is interference indicated?