Author's Response

Each of the discussants has responded to this paper from the foci of his own interest and each discussant has added his own views of the problems discussed in the paper.

When I first began thinking about this subject and reviewing the clinical material upon which this paper is based, I had hoped to be able to make some unifying statement that would have clarified many of the legitimate questions raised by the discussants.

This did not turn out to be the case, and this is one of the important points of the paper: that a variety of genetic and developmental issues as well as a number of vicissitudes in object relationships were encountered as being antecedent to the transference difficulties described. My own view is that the difficulties lie predominantly in the antecedent object relationships, and I hope that was at least implicit in the paper.

Insofar as Dr. Solomon's comments are concerned, I do not see that these case reports illustrate the usual garden-variety transference neurosis. Again, I tried to describe instances in which the establishment or analysis of the transference neurosis was either incomplete or impossible. Dr. Solomon correctly points out that the hostile component is much more transparent in the homosexual erotic transference. However, in the particular instance described, the patient was able to work to a considerable extent with the hostility, but the homosexual erotic transference remained a fixed position that was only grudgingly and halfheartedly given up even after many years of analysis.

Insofar as Dr. MacLeod's comments are concerned, I wish to point out that except for the first case reported, the patients were in classical psychoanalysis and neither manipulations nor parameters of any kind were introduced. More accurately, classical analysis was attempted but an analyzable transference neurosis did not develop.

The patients have been seen since the termination of analysis, each is functioning considerably better in his external life, but it