Discussion of Joseph M. Natterson's Article, Extra-Analytic Transference: A Two-Way Tide

That transference phenomena are more or less ubiquitous is a logical deduction to be drawn from our definition and theory of transference. This ubiquity is a part of the everyday experience and observation of analysts, and also enters into many of the perceptions of ordinary persons as, for example, the young wife who tells her friend, “My mother is coming and every time she comes, I get very nervous. My husband says I behave badly to him, and he's right. She doesn't do anything out of the way, but somehow or other she just makes me very nervous.” I like the fact that Dr. Natterson has chosen to look at this ubiquity in connection with certain types of rather common clinical experiences, and that he talks in terms of a “flow of transferences” and deals with them as two-way phenomena in the therapeutic situation and, by inference, in ordinary life situations. Much of this is in keeping with some of my own ideas about the nature and importance of “two-way” transferences.

Some therapeautic situations present not merely a “flow” but a real “flood” of transferences. In such clinical situations, the technical problem often becomes not how to bring out transference material, but how to evaluate and handle the many extra-analytic transferences which may obscure material pertinent to the developing transference neurosis. It is indeed interesting that our literature contains virtually no discussions of the meaning and management of the extra-analytic transferences. I have taken at face value Dr. Natterson's statement that this is an almost wholly neglected field in our literature. It is a subject to which I've often given casual thought, and have always assumed that any transferences—no matter where or how manifested—brought into the associational material were somehow or other grist to the analytic mill, so to speak. I welcome Dr. Natterson's addressing himself to this topic.