Transference Before Transference

Abstract

This paper is predominantly a clinical presentation that describes the transmigration of one patient’s transference to another, with the analyst functioning as a sort of transponder. It involves an apparently accidental episode in which there was an unconscious intersection between two patients. The author’s aim is to show how transference from one case may affect transference in another, a phenomenon the author calls transference before transference. The author believes that this idea may serve as a tool for understanding the unconscious work that takes place in the clinical situation. In a clinical example, the analyst finds himself caught up in an enactment involving two patients in which he becomes the medium of what happens in session.

• Transference
• countertransference
• analytic process
• sibling rivalry
• unconscious communication
• transition between patients
• enactment
• analytic listening
• dreaming
• mirroring
• analytic relationship
• analytic stance

Notes

Of course, there are analytic authors who have addressed this topic, the most relevant being Racker (). Although I regret that I cannot cite all the other analytic contributors whose work has stimulated my interest in this subject, they include the following: Celenza (); Chused (); Gabbard (); Greenberg (, ); Jacobs (, ); McLaughlin (); Poland (, ); Renik (; ); and Smith (, ).

The name I use here is obviously a fictitious one, like the others in this narrative, and was chosen to evoke the feelings induced by his real name.

Beaten dog is an idiomatic Italian expression used to convey the feelings of a frustrated, humiliated person who is unable to react. In this case, for reasons that will be clarified, I made a slip of the tongue and said wolf instead. Unbeknownst to me at the time, could this slip have been a precursor to the second patient’s transference?

See also Winnicott’s () unending dreaming, Bion’s () reverie, and Khan’s () description of the analyst’s disposition as a dreaming ego.

This is my translation from the original French.