You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
In previous chapters the centre of interest has been on the personalities in whom the sense of identity has become fixed in that infantile part which is an inhabitant of the claustrum. And it is with this population that the special technical problems arise. In the normal and neurotic person, the entry into analysis may, and usually does, commence with a preformed transference which has gathered its expectations from literature, films, friends' accounts. It is generally either austerely institutional or wildly romantic and is set aside fairly promptly when the setting has been clarified, the method outlined, cooperation requested, the first dreams are interpreted, and the week-end breaks begin to have an impact. The need for objects of infantile transference then favours the gradual attraction of these facets of the personality into the ambience of the analysis, the “gathering of the transference”. Experience strongly suggests that the most satisfactory answer to the question “why do you seek analysis?” would be, “Because I need to gather together my needs for infantile transference so that there may be some possibility of working conflicts through instead of repeatedly enacting them.” Perhaps it will be thought that I am using transference in a restricted sense when I stress both “infantile” and need of an “object”, but it is my understanding of the term that transference derives from the externalization of the relationship to internal objects, and has therefore the configuration of family life. It stands in continual oscillation with the organization of narcissism, that is, those activities and alliances of infantile structures which are outside the direct influence of the parental figures and usually in opposition to their values.
The pre-formed transference with people who seek re-analysis because of an impasse in previous attempts is quite different, and takes a long time to be set aside completely. It is based on the “particularities” of the previous analyst, a