The enigma of transference. Freud’s discovery and its repercussions

ABSTRACT

This brief introduction gives an historical outline of the development of the concept of transference in the different psychoanalytic traditions. It goes back to the various meanings of the German term “Übertragung” – transference, transcription, transmission, transposition and assignment – and how they were accentuated by the different psychoanalytic schools. The paper depicts the transition from a mainly intrapsychic understanding of transference as repetition to a more bipersonal and intersubjective approach exploring the different meanings of “intersubjectivity” and the forces that operate within the analytic field. Major developments arose from a new understanding of the role of the analyst’s countertransference and the detection of transference mechanisms in narcissistic, borderline and psychotic states. The exploration of different forms of splitting and projective and introjective identification deepened the understanding of the analytic communication and led to concepts like “acting in”, role-responsiveness, “actualization” and “enactment”. As the author tries to show, all these approaches can find a legitimization in Freud’s original writings, but the main differences concern technical issues, i.e. the interpretation of transference.

KEYWORDS:

• Transference
• repetition
• countertransference
• interpretation
• intersubjectivity
• analytic field

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 A wording that evokes in some way the later notion of D.W. Winnicott (1953) of an “intermediary space”.

2 It is interesting that Freud introduces the term “compulsion to repeat” for the first time in his paper on “Remembering, Repeating and Working-Through” (1914, 150).

3 See also Meissner’s (1998, 2000) differentiation between transference, therapeutic alliance and the “real” relationship between analyst and patient.