A Discussion of the Paper by Ángel Garma on 'Aspects of the Transference Resistances in the Final Stages of Psychoanalytic Treatment'

To anyone who has followed Dr Garma's writings, it will come as no surprise that he has taken up a topic as important and interesting as the specific problems that come up at the end of analytic treatment. There has hardly been any topic or aspect of psychoanalytic theory or practice to which Dr Garma has not contributed substantially during an incredibly long and productive career as a psychoanalyst.

The concepts which he has presented to us as a 'triad', occurring during the final stages of successful analysis and seen more clearly in the cases of candidates, have been expressed before by Dr Garma but not with the clinical examples illustrating his concepts and showing the processes through which he comes to his conclusions. The 'triad' consists of: (a) an unconscious phobic reaction, (b) an intensification of the mourning reaction, and (c) debasing projections of the analysand on to his analyst. His observations include the suggestion that one would obtain better results by showing the analysand the phobic reaction, rather than the other two.1

As I studied Dr Garma's paper, reflected on my own experience, and reviewed his references, a number of points came to mind.

Dr Garma often refers to 'the patient's great unconscious fear of getting better, because of the opposition of his superego (internal persecutory objects) transferentially projected on to his analyst'. I wonder if this is synonymous with what has long been known as the 'fear of retaliation', a familiar component of the oedipal situation, the law of talion; if this is so, this could well be a question of semantics, both describing an obstacle occurring during the phallic phase of development, and to be worked through before true genitality is obtained. I would appreciate Dr Garma's comments on this point.

The second point—possibly a more important one—is the question of the countertransference in the final stages of psychoanalysis, particularly in the case of candidates in training, as Dr Garma point