Meetings of the New York Psychoanalytic Society

DISCUSSION: Dr. Annie Reich suggested that the transference phenomena persisting after analysis in these cases may be due to unanalyzability or unanalyzed transference. Even in ideal cases a certain amount of unanalyzability is inherent in the situation. From Freud we know that the analysis must take place under conditions of abstinence, but this in pure form is impossible. Certain gratifications from the analyst inherent in the relationship cannot be analyzed. Also not fully analyzable are inevitable reality factors. In the case cited the analyst was young and attractive and probably a sexual object for the patient. Such realities cannot be analyzed and make for a readiness to return to analysis and ease of regression in it.

Dr. Victor Rosen referred to clinical material showing the importance of adolescent and adult trauma as well as infantile trauma in causing points of fixation for subsequent regressive episodes. He suggested that even a successful analysis may inflict fresh trauma and be another way in which adult fixation points are induced. He thought the regressive phenomena in Dr. Pfeffer's follow-up cases might represent traumatic residuals of analysis as well as transference residuals and resolved portions of the transference. Such traumatic residuals may be entirely unavoidable.

Dr. Rudolph Loewenstein emphasized the importance of the study as yielding rich results and promising further ones. He questioned whether the results presented in the series so far were valid for all cases. He doubted Dr. Reich's assertion that all former patients are to some extent addicted to analysis. The opposite can happen at times. In the case of two patients accepted for analysis after the death of their analyst, one developed a transference neurosis in the second analysis without difficulty while the other was unable to do so, this patient remaining faithful to the former analyst. A factor to be considered in