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Dr. Natterson's interesting specification of the transference originating (independently) outside the analytic situation and “flowing into” the therapeutic transference (with lesser variants) is a special and discrete emphasis of his own which merits attention. One may view this question (1) from a broad theoretical-conceptual-semantic point of view (with apologies for the condensation); and (2) from an inevitably related (but not always congruent) clinical-phenomenological point of view.
It may be assumed that in everyday life, even among relatively healthy individuals, all important relationships include variable quanta of transference affect (in some instances, perceptual modification or emphasis) along with the relatively “autonomous” sensory-cognitive reactions and appropriate ego-syntonic drive impulses, largely responsive to the mature perceptions. In neurotic character disorders, the transference elements may indeed be preponderant in certain decisive references.
Ordinarily the give-and-take and relatively free mobility of everyday life (as to environmental responsiveness, satisfactions, alternatives, punishments, aggressive outlets, and other modalities) preserves the intrapsychic distribution of transference and reality, with the former in a minimal role. Where undue frustration, seduction, and infantile associative reverberation (or similar conditions) occur, not to speak of the dynamic-economic predisposition to transference regression (equivalent to the latent predisposition to neurosis), morbid intensification of transferences in relation to important objects may also occur, often occasioning the outbreak of clinical illness.
Where such illness leads to psychoanalytic treatment, the relationship to the analyst, apart from technical considerations (active sense), includes the emotional atmosphere of
neutrality and the pervasive rule of abstinence. I cannot, of course, discuss these in detail. However, it is my clinical and theoretical conviction that in