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When patients in psychoanalysis are concurrently in couple or family therapy, a web of relationships develops among all the participants. The importance of this phenomenon has become increasingly clear to the authors of this article in the many years that we have been meeting to discuss psychoanalysis and family therapy. We have given the name transference field to the interweaving of unconscious fantasies among the patients and therapists involved in this shared undertaking.
Freud wrote what can be considered the first statement about the transference field. “When, as so often, the neurosis is related to conflicts between members of a family, the healthy party will not hesitate long in choosing between his own interest and the sick party's recovery” (Freud, 1917, p. 459).
Although we agree that the patient's neurosis may be related to conflicts among family members, we question the division of the family into sick and healthy parties. If the healthy parties were so sound, then why would they oppose the decrease in neurotic suffering in the sick one? We see this opposition to change rather as a manifestation of interrelated and unconscious neurotic issues involving all members of the family.
Therapists also have many fantasies about the other participants in the transference field. Frequently, these fantasies are little noted