Short Communication: Transference and Projection

Trainees and patients who have had a fair amount of analysis bring home to me that I habitually use certain surprising phrases of whose significance I myself am incompletely aware and which shock my colleagues. One of them is: “There is no such thing as a positive or negative transference”. But is this so incorrect? Every analyst experiences positive and negative projections in any analysis, but these are only part of the transference itself. The transference is more than projection, being something archetypal, unconscious, and metaphorical (cf. Jung, 1946, and Stein, 1955), and as such represents phenomena and processes. The positive and negative projections only give it their appearance and sign. Because it transcends them, the term transference can legitimately be-distinguished from the term projection, and used to designate the successive stages of the individuation process as it occurs in relation to the analyst. In thus distinguishing between transference and projections I partly follow Jung, who in “The Psychology of the Transference” has shown that the individuation process can be seen reflected in the alchemical “work”. Within this “work” the relationship between the “king” and the “queen”, exponents of the “adept” and the “anima”, is expressed by way of projections which lead eventually—with deviations and temporary estrangements between the couple—to the coniunctio and to the birth of the hermaphrodite. Projections are aids to the “work”, they reflect it but are not to be identified with it, and so the transference of the individuation process goes on behind, or one could also say within, them.

In the following examples I want to illustrate how the distinction between transference and projections is useful. By demonstrating it I have sometimes been able to bring about a leap forward in the development of the analysis, and have always found it a great help in understanding the analytic process at any particular time.