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The following pages contain some considerations on the dynamics of transference and the part it plays in the psycho-analytic process. I do not claim to say anything essentially new, but endeavour to clarify the theoretical basis of certain ideas that in practice are accepted and utilized by many analysts.
Freud (1912) deals with the problem of the dynamics of transference from two points of view: first, transference in general and its causes, and second, transference in psychoanalytic treatment and the reasons for the special intensity it there assumes. He gives two causes for transference in general, (a) the fact that every person acquires in childhood certain characteristic ways of ‘living his love’, from which arise patterns regularly repeated throughout his life, and (b) the fact that lack of libidinal satisfaction, caused by unconscious fixations, creates a libidinal need and expectancy which is directed towards the persons he meets. The special part played by transference in psycho-analytic treatment is to be explained, according to Freud, by its relation to resistance. The transference becomes so intense and long-lasting because it serves the resistance; the analysand reproduces and acts upon his unconscious impulses in order not to ‘remember’ them.
Everyday analytic experience corroborates Freud. But one may ask whether the relationship between transference and resistance discovered by Freud is the only one, whether other factors besides resistance influence analytic transference, and whether analytic transference is distinguished from general transference by characteristics other than the degree of intensity.
The specific character of analytic procedure begins with the ‘free’ association and the fundamental rule.2 These signify the