Transference: Historical Survey

I would like briefly to sketch the major contributions Freud and others have made to our understanding of the theoretical and technical problems concerning transference. I shall take them up in chronological order covering the years 1895 to 1960. I shall stress only those points which I consider to be significant advances and shall omit many valuable papers which are essentially summaries or repetitions. The student is advised to read the original papers.

My version of the meaningful contents is not only extremely condensed but also a subjective selection. This subject has already been touched upon in Section 1.1.

Freud's first description and discussion of the role of transference is to be found in Chapter IV on psychotherapy in the Studies on Hysteria (1893-95). At first he considered it a disadvantage that the patient unduly forced his personal relations to the physician into the foreground, although he recognized that the personal influence alone can remove certain resistances (p. 301). Some patients tended to feel neglected, others feared becoming dependent, even sexually dependent. Later he described some patients who tended to transfer onto the figure of the physician distressing ideas which arose from the content of their analysis. These patients, said Freud, had made a “false connection” onto the analyst (pp. 302-303). In some cases this seemed to be a regular occurrence. He then went on to describe the technique of handling this situation. (1) It should be made conscious. (2) One should demonstrate how it is an obstacle. (3) One should attempt to trace its origin in the hour. At first Freud was “greatly annoyed” at this increase in work, but he soon realized its value (p. 304).

The Dora case is a landmark in psychoanalytic technique (Freud, 1905a). Here, in all humility and with great clarity, Freud described how he learned about the decisive importance of transference by his failure to recognize and handle it in one of his patients. This led to a prematu