Transference Situations in an Hour of Analysis

In the orthodox analysis of a patient, certain sessions are more interesting and more revealing than others. Occasionally, however, a single analytical hour will stand out so sharply against all previous hours, as to give the impression, that the patient had made a special effort or was unconsciously motivated to engulf the analyst into the whirlpool of his conflicts and complexes.1 Whether this is an attempt at finding a short cut out of his difficulties, or, on the contrary, to make the analyst's course of sailing more arduous, will depend largely on the winds of transference situations. Such an unusual hour was held with a patient, who is a physician, during his third week of analysis with me, subsequent to a year of analysis with a former analyst who transferred him to me.

This patient's illness began about two years ago and appeared to have been an affective psychosis, with attempted suicide. This occurred while he was in active service. He was on account of it, thereafter institutionalized for a short period of time, and then permanently released from the Army. He came to New York and sought psychiatric advice, which resulted in his being again hospitalized in order to receive a course of ten shock treatments. This had the desired effect of relieving him of his depression. Subsequent to this period of treatment, he was well enough to accept an internship in pathology, and simultaneously to undergo his analysis. The aim of this paper is not so much to portray the dynamic elements in this patient's ailment, as it is to demonstrate crucial problems in technique that are apt to accrue even in one hour of analysis. The added and most likely provocative factor of this episode, eventuated from his change of analysts. I hope this sketchy presentation will be justified by the discussion of the mooted points it may engender.

My patient began this hour by relating a dream, in which he appeared to be examining the mouth of a woman and diagnosing her condition to be one of t