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All phenomena of the transference need careful restudy. We are not justified in referring everything we observe in the transference to the patient's childhood and his unconscious. We must endeavor to untangle (as in the analysis of dreams) what are stimuli from current situations and what is repetition of infantile experiences. We should moreover bear in mind that the transference in the course of an analysis is determined by reality more than is the dream, and that therefore reality is bound to play a greater role. Above all, we must pay closer attention to the distortion and elaboration brought about through the normal functioning of such mental mechanisms as projection, displacement, and reaction-formation.
Classically, analysis aims at development of transference unhampered by current reality. To this end the analyst endeavors to efface himself as much as possible, to be detached, objective, emotionally antiseptic. The analyst prepares himself for this by undergoing during his training a personal analysis which should reveal to him his own complexes.
It is of clinical importance to discover how far one is likely to achieve this objective. I believe that it is not possible for the analyst to be the same all day and every day for years, blotting out all that befalls him in his private life. However well he has been analyzed, it is unlikely that he can become and remain free from the biases of his complexes. Nor is it possible for him to denude the physical surroundings of his office of all significance.
I therefore cannot accept the view that the analyst functions only as a mirror. The patient's reactions in analysis are influenced by his expectations of what analysis is; by his awareness beforehand of how he will be expected to conduct himself; by the behavior and personality of the analyst; by the patient's expectations