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Transference, understood in its widest sense, is an essential part of all human interaction. In new contexts emerging in life, the individual seeks possibilities both for re-finding previously-experienced satisfactions and for rectifying past disappointments.
Psychoanalysis, with a deliberately created state of non-gratification in its setting, is a specific method, a specific process and a specific relationship for the systematic study of transference. The analyst attempts to reconstruct in his own mind the psychic work the analysand has done on the pressure of his drives, and then represents in his relationship with his analyst. The analyst tries to pass on his understanding to the analysand so that the analysand can utilize it in his exploration of himself.
Central to the psychoanalytic process is how the analyst uses his tool, himself, in the service of the analytic relationship and thus of the patient. The analyst must be able to sublimate that which is most satisfying in being an analyst—the position of continuously being the object of another person's desire—into a professional resource. As one of my patients said to me: “You must be crazy to have chosen a profession where you are so important to another person.”
How does the analyst use his immense potential in a way which serves the patient and not the analyst's own purposes? This core issue of psychoanalysis is the theme of the recent book entitled Motöverföring. Om omedveten kommunikation (Countertransference. On Unconscious Communication) edited by Johan Norman and Franziska Ylander, consisting of articles written by prominent Swedish psychoanalysts. From different perspectives, all