Freud's initial stipulation of transference is related to and contrasted with the nineteenth-century neurological tradition out of which he emerged, with particular attention to the works of Brown-Séquard, Charcot and Jackson. Charcot's pre-psychoanalytic stipulation of transference, entirely neglected in the psychoanalytic literature to date, is highlighted.

Through this historical study, I have sought to advance the thesis that the concept of transference is a biologic and an epistemic construct in ways that cannot be fully understood if its origins in the neuroscience of Freud's day are ignored or summarily dismissed as antiquarian and irrelevant.