3.2 Transference: Clinical Picture - General Characteristics

In this section I would like to familiarize the student with some of the most typical manifestations of transference phenomena as they are apt to occur during the course of analysis. I believe this can best be done by focusing on those characteristics of the patient's reactions to the analyst which indicate the likelihood of a transference reaction. It should be borne in mind that the presence of the qualities I am highlighting is not absolute evidence of transference. The quality under scrutiny must also be a repetition and inappropriate.

A basic question immediately arises as we attempt to illustrate the clinical picture of transference reactions. Could we not classify all reactions to the analyst as transference? According to our definition, the answer is no. Let us take a simple example: A patient becomes angry with his analyst. One cannot determine from this

fact alone whether one is dealing with a transference reaction. One first has to ascertain whether the analyst's behavior justifies the anger. If the patient became annoyed because the analyst interrupted the patient's associations by answering the telephone, then I would not consider the patient's annoyance a transference reaction. His response seems realistic, in accordance with the circumstances, and appropriate to a mature level of functioning. This does not imply that the patient's reaction is to be ignored, but we handle such occurrences differently than we do transference phenomena. We might explore the patient's history and fantasies in regard to anger reactions, but, despite our findings, we would remind the patient and ourselves that his overt reaction to the frustration was realistic. If the patient had become furious and not just annoyed, or if he had remained completely indifferent, then the inappropriate intensity of the reaction would indicate that we are probably dealing with a repetition or a reaction from childhood. The same would hold true if his annoyance lasted