From transfer to transference, or: Let us not forget laios when we recognize oedipus

Abstract

The author develops the thesis that transference can only be properly understood as representing a transferred burden. Wherever the burden, by means of the symptoms it causes, succeeds in finding readiness in a fellow human being to share the predicament, therapy ensues in form of exceptional vicarious solidarity. Thus transfer is transformed into transference. Therapy, then, amounts to a second, a dialogical reception. This means reconnection of the ties, once lost, with a common human responsibility with regard to the challenges and potentialities of individual and social life contained in the burden. This constitutes the human ground, and the only ground, on which any methodical skills and theory formations carry real human weight.