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Dr. Little uses Stern's dynamic concept of transference in the broadest possible sense: as an ego function which serves to assist in overcoming trauma. It thereby secondarily fosters self preservation and adaptation. I believe this concept would be accepted by all analysts as basic to all psychoanalytic theory, including the theory of psychoanalytic treatment. Dr. Little then goes on to examine at a clinical level the transferences developed in the analyst in a specific analytic situation.
Both in the author's basic theoretic approach and his clinical observations, there is implicit acceptance of the regressive phenomena associated with transference developments and of the manner in which such phenomena may be “in the service of the ego,” or, as he chooses to emphasize here, have “survival value.” This he regards primarily from the point of view of survival of the analytic process as such.
We are indebted to Dr. Little for his contribution partly because we have so very few reports of this character in our literature. No analysis is ever free of its own periodic and intrinsic stresses. In addition, severe external stresses occur in the life of every analyst either from illness or other sources and are known to affect his relationships with some and perhaps all of his patients.
These stresses, for understandable reasons, seldom receive clinical observation and reporting. In the first place, every analyst knows that severe stress mobilizes in himself, as in any person, regressive symptomatology in the direction of narcissistic self-involvement accompanied by emotional and behavioral distortions in the direction of self-protection and self-gratification. This may include direct reaching out toward any available objects for support and attention, manifested in the form of transferences designed to achieve further gain in narcissistic supplies in order to deal with the stress. While the analyst's intelligence may be perfectly capable of perceiving that he is regressed and f