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ABSTRACT
Transference interpretation has always been regarded as very important to psychoanalytic practice. However, analysts differ on its centrality relative to other forms of intervention. This paper argues that transference interpretation as introduced by Freud and then taken up and developed by Klein (“transference interpretation proper”) is, in fact, the only form of intervention that could bring about essentially analytic change. To understand why, a taxonomy of different forms of intervention commonly practiced within the analytic situation is presented, including interventions that relate to transference, but do not constitute transference interpretation proper. The latter kind is then described in detail. Next, the paper defines analytic change. It relies on a particular perspective on what it is to come to know psychic truth; one that sees such knowing as a lived state of mind, rather than a state of having knowledge about one's dynamics. This foundational Freudian perspective has been especially advanced through Klein's notion of phantasy. Given this view of analytic change it becomes clear that it can only be brought about through transference interpretation proper. The paper also addresses reasons why it seems especially difficult to embrace this view in contemporary psychoanalytic culture, while stressing how crucial it is to do so.
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Correction Statement
This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.
Notes
1 Such denial can also shape the analysand’s phantasies in relation to the act of knowing (e.g. that it is invasive and forbidden) and in this way more generally limit the capacity to know.
2 Here I rely on an understanding of Freud’s thinking that I have developed in several articles (see Blass Citation1992; Citation2001, Citation2002, Citation2003, Citation2006a, Citation2006b, Citation2014, Citation2016a, Citation2016b, Citation2019, Citation2020, Citation2023).
3 Wissbegeirde is more often associated with Bion and secondarily with Klein but is actually inherent in Freud’s thinking. He also took note of the epistemophilic instinct and, for a short time (1908–1915), he also spoke of a related Forschertriebe.
4 As Freud suggests in “Ego and the Id” (Citation1923, 44–45): “the activity of thinking is … supplied from the sublimation of erotic motive forces”.
5 This view, while perhaps subject to neglect in recent years, underlies James Strachey’s very influential “The Nature of the Therapeutic Action of Psychoanalysis” (Citation1934), notably written while Freud was alive. There Strachey offers an understanding of what is essentially mutative in analytic interventions. He firmly grounds this understanding in the development of Freud’s thinking on the curative process, on its logic, but describes it in Klein’s terms and considers it to be in accord with her thinking. This understanding presents transference interpretation as the sole mutative factor in analysis. Strachey writes: “If we now turn back and consider for a little the picture I have given of a mutative interpretation with its various characteristics, we shall notice that my description appears to exclude every kind of interpretation except those of a single class—the class, namely, of transference interpretations. Is it to be understood that no extratransference interpretation can set in motion the chain of events which I have suggested as being the essence of psycho-analytical therapy? That is indeed my opinion” (1934, 154). More generally this view is in line with how Klein and many of her followers think of their relationship with Freud, a point which Hanna Segal states most explicitly in her paper “Melanie Klein’s Technique” (Citation1981[1967]). This paper opens with the statement that “The Kleinian Technique is psychoanalytical and strictly based on Freudian psychoanalytic concepts” (3). She goes on to specify what this means, stressing that the analyst only interprets and that “the interpretations are centered on the transference situation” (3). She concludes that Kleinians have followed Freud’s technique “with greatest exactitude, more so indeed than most other Freudian analysts” (4), which leads her to wonder: “Could it be said, therefore, that there is no room for the term Kleinian technique?” (4). Her answer, of course, is that there is room for this term because Klein opened us to the understanding of new dynamics that required new kinds of interpretation. But the basic focus on transference interpretation is regarded as grounded in Freud. Klein herself expresses similar views (e.g. in the second of her “Lectures on Technique”, in Steiner Citation2017).
6 And yet, one may allow for the possibility that on special occasions a process akin to analytic mutative knowing may happen in other ways; that it may be set into motion by some event or reflection of a self-analytic kind. This is exemplified in Klein’s description of the case of Mrs. A. and the transformation of her relationship with her parental objects that takes place following the death of her son (Klein Citation1940).