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Psychoanalysis as a therapeutic modality is distinguished from other therapies by virtue of the fact that its goal is the resolution of the infantile neurosis as it develops and becomes manifest in the transference: ideally we see the establishment, analysis and resolution of the transference neurosis. (It is apparent that there are conditions which precede this development and other conditions which interfere with it.)
Broadly speaking, transference can be said to refer to the fact that, to a greater or lesser degree, we all invest in our current relationships the anxieties, conflicts and expectations of our childhood. Thus we have many transferences.
The transference neurosis, however, refers to the investment on to the person of the analyst in the analytic situation of the wishes and fantasies of early childhood with reactions whose structure and content is similar to what we understand about the formation of neurotic symptoms.
Sterba (11) made a basic contribution to clinical theory by suggesting that dissociation within the ego is an important and early goal in the psychoanalytic situation. He stated that a permanently unified ego such as is met in cases of excessive narcissism or in certain psychotic states is not susceptible to analysis. This therapeutic dissociation—in which the analyst allies himself with the ego against the forces of instinct and repression—is a necessity if the analyst is to have a chance of winning part of the ego over to his side.
Zetzel, (12) who has in this connection reminded us that there are few current problems concerning transference that Freud did not recognize implicitly or explicitly, has also contributed the concept of the therapeutic alliance between the analyst and the healthy part of the patient's ego: it is felt that the success or failure in establishing it rests upon the nature of the early object relationships.