Transference: A Change in Conception or Only in Emphasis?

I am of course grateful to my critics1 for the attention they have given my work and for the generally friendly tone of their comments even when they have important objections to make. My rejoinder is essentially organized around two main points. First, I both accept and reject, as I shall be explaining in detail, the justice of the criticism that I have overemphasized the centrality of the analysis of the transference. Second, the monograph fails to make clear my espousal of a minority conceptualization of transference which differs significantly from the generally accepted one, in that, as Hoffman (1983) puts it, the minority view conceptualizes transference in a social as against an asocial paradigm. Though I later discuss that changed conception of transference in detail, I summarize it here as a rejection of the view that there is a dichotomy between transference and nontransference and that that dichotomy is between the distorted and the realistic.

There is a connection between the criticism and the failure, in that had I been clearer in my own mind about the changed conception of transference, I would have been more enthusiastic about the contribution I was making in that regard and somewhat less focused on the centrality issue. My personal tendency to hyperbole also played a role.