Negative Transference in Psychoanalysis*

Foreword

Psychoanalytic treatment is a system of therapy specially designed to reveal to the patient his inadequate psychological equipment for adjustment in human relations, and to aid him in reconstruction. An analysis acts as a laboratory experiment in which the subject sees his plan of life in operation. The deeper lying features of his psychic organization become manifest in this special setting, in a way that would be impossible in the outside world, where social considerations of one sort or another are a determining factor. The subject brings to the analytical situations his patterns of emotional needs and response just as he does to all contacts with people elsewhere. In ordinary relationships, business, marital, friendship and so on, the neurotically handicapped individual is expected, and makes the attempt, to mould his inadequate emotional material into forms consistent with the attitudes and behavior of normal adulthood. In the analysis the immediate goal is reversed; all effort is directed toward revealing how the subject really does think and feel, and to bring to the surface his general reactions as they are, rather than as they appear to be or should be; in other words, the true self is brought out from behind the disguise of the surface personality. The reactions of this real self toward the person of the analyst make up the so—called transference phenomena. Made aware, through this experience, of the. childish and undeveloped state of many of his demands from life, and realizing his inability to satisfy them in reality, the subject is in a position as never before to modify and reconstruct them, to achieve, so to speak, a tardy psychological growth along special emotional lines.

Some of the conscious transference manifestations present themselves as obvious states of mind. The patient approves or disapproves, is pleased or annoyed, hopeful or otherwise, and so on. The unconscious