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.
We should all be grateful to Mme Berry for tackling in her paper some basic problems of the transference. I cannot agree with all her concepts concerning the transference, but the inclusion of brief clinical material makes me feel on a more familiar ground.
I should like to comment on three points in Mme Berry's paper: (a) theoretical aspects of her paper; (b) problems of transference interpretation; (c) clinical observations chosen to illustrate her concepts.
As to the more theoretical aspects of the paper, Mme Berry seems to consider it essential that in analysis the patient should come to know something of the analyst as a real person. She mentions family life, habits and tastes. The patient will go from a perception of the analyst based only on projections to a knowledge of the human traits of the analyst and an understanding of the analyst's world.
I think that such factors exert their influence in analysis. But I do not think that their role in analysis should be given as much emphasis as Mme Berry does. More important than the analyst introducing himself to the patient, it is to introduce the patient to himself. The interpretation of transference is primarily aimed at self-knowledge and only secondarily at correcting a distorted perception of the analyst.
Mme Berry seems implicitly to adopt the thesis that it is more important to relive and repeat in a different setting, with a different person, rather than to remember through verbal communication and acquire insight. She accordingly minimizes the part played by interpretation in analysis.
Mme Berry accepts Nacht's (1962) view that the benevolent (loving) attitude of the analyst is a prerequisite for an efficient analysis. All the curative factors she mentions are clearly integrated with Nacht's conceptions. According to her findings, the analytic 'cure' depends on the patient's opportunities for expressing aggressiveness, on the difference between the analyst's attitude and the parents' attitude, and on