Negative Transferences

Classically, negative transferences develop as a counterpoint to positive aspects of the transference: as the negative pole of the positive transference, they are inherent to the unfolding of the process. They arise from the inevitable repetition in analysis of experiences of frustration and lack linked to the feeling that the object is neither satisfying nor able to live up to infantile expectations. They translate movements of opposition in connection with the instinctual drive ambivalence that infiltrates the unconscious/preconscious relationship between the subject and his past objects and thus, in the context of the analysis, between the subject and the analyst today.

In The Dynamics of the Transference, Freud (1912), describes the effects of the function of the transference in the analytic process as being both the major obstacle to, as well as the essential instrument (a real tool) of, progress in analysis, and distinguishes between two types of transference, two “currents” of transference: one, consisting of friendly or affectionate positive feelings; the other of hostile, negative feelings, sometimes with an erotic colouring. They may manifest themselves openly or remain concealed, cloaked in other garments such as a transference love in its eroticised form.

However, negative transferences are not only defined by the negative or violent quality of the feelings they express, but also by the force of their movements which impede the unfolding of the process (Bouvet, 1959). Thus, it is important to distinguish between the quality of affects that are negative from the negative effects of the transference that slow down, impede or sometimes immobilise psychoanalytic work: in other words, the negativity of the transference depends less on the sign attributed to its content than on the negative quality of its effects.

This was the case for a patient whose analysis was not making progress, even though things had seemed promising at the beginning. While a basic positiv