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I've been invited to speak to you today about the modern psychoanalytic view on preoedipal transferences, or what we call the narcissistic transference.
Before I address the issue of transference, I would like to say something about modern psychoanalysis. The word modern modifying psychoanalysis sounds presumptuous to me since within each school of thought, modern ideas emerge out of existing theory. This term came into existence in the early fifties when Hyman Spotnitz, lecturing at the Stuyvesant Polyclinic in Manhattan, asked that we look for what is modern regardless of the school of thought from which it emerges so that when we seek explanations in a case, we will not be closed into one system of beliefs.
As analysts we have an opportunity to test all explanations within the natural flow of the psychoanalytic session, and if we remain open can generate provisional truths about what we observe.
Since Freud's comments on the stone wall of narcissism, analysts have asked, Can the wall be penetrated and, if so, how? When Freud worked he did not have a body of theory or a school of thought to rely on as he attempted to understand patients. The method he developed has much to recommend it. For example, he observed that a number of female patients reported being seduced and, in their analyses, produced actual memories of childhood seduction. His first theory was that incest is a reality, children are seduced. As he continued to listen and think about what he heard he developed doubts