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The major aims of this book are to clarify the nature of transference, to demonstrate its ubiquitous existence in life and in therapy and to show that transference in therapy is an essential condition for the psychic development of the patient. These aims are carried out in clear and scholarly fashion with many well taken illustrations. Transference is seen to be as normal and natural as breathing and as a primary mode of expressing relatedness. Indeed, excessive difficulty in transferring is frequently a mark of deep disturbance.
Though transference is dealt with as being so universal and natural a phenomenon that the authors even speculate as to its physiological roots, their central concern is in dealing with the meaning and function of transference in therapy. This concern inevitably requires that at times they pay attention to the therapeutic situation as a whole, recognizing the significance of variations among patients, therapists and patient-therapist pairings. These excursions may remind the reader that central as transference and counter-transference may be, they are part of a total situation. That situation may be seen somewhat out of focus when viewed primarily through one element, significant as it is.
The authors have made heroic efforts to avoid distortion. Part of their purpose in dealing with aspects of therapy other than transference is to avoid such distortion. A positive consequence is that some integrative understanding between different aspects of the therapeutic situation is brought about. Unavoidably, since in dealing with transference as the main subject a process is being abstracted and magnified, our attention is only partly drawn to the great variations to be found in individual samples of therapy.
The authors acknowledge the difficulty of giving a precise definition of transference, a difficulty created by its being expressive of the determiners and a part of that which is expressed in most interpersonal relations. But their distinction bet