Meeting of the Psychoanalytic Institute of New England, East

DISCUSSION: Dr. Howard Levine spoke of the importance of the training analysis and continuing self-analysis in regard to the analyst's attitudes about transference neurosis. Dr. Alexandra Rolde noted the relative absence of countertransference descriptions in Dr. Reed's clinical examples. Dr. Arthur Valenstein said that in an attempt to insure that psychoanalysis would be seen as a science, technical papers since Freud had created a "neoclassical obsessive adherence to rules, a sense of abstemiousness which could be equated with surgical asepsis." Dr. Reed said that during training, a classically defined transference neurosis had too often become a "touchstone, a standard," the presence or absence of which in a control analysis was seen as an indicator of the candidate's ability. "It is important," she continued, "to free ourselves from a narrow definition of it, particularly from the idea that it develops without the analyst's influence." Dr. Valenstein agreed that if viewed within a one-person psychology, transference neurosis would be defined in a constricted way. He emphasized the importance of the unique genetic component in its elaboration by each patient. Dr. Ana-Maria Rizzuto described two levels of psychic functioning that are involved in its development: the unconscious representation and cathexis; and the enactment process that takes place in action, reaction, or the absence of action. She asked how these two levels can be integrated in our efforts to understand the evolution of the meaning of transference neurosis. Dr. Reed replied that it has become a convention to speak of it only from the patient's point of view. Dr. Levine said that we sometimes comfort ourselves by thinking we can be neutral and that the patient is a constant. Dr. Gary Goldsmith noted that aspects of the transference neurosis were sometimes only subjectively felt through the analyst's perception of gesture and tone. Dr. Sheldon Roth commented on the importance of count