Transference Neurosis Revisited: The Case of the Emotionally Frozen Woman With Help From Davanloo, Saint Paul and Dickens’ Estella

ABSTRACT

The most destructive psychological structures are made all that more lethal by their invisibility. This article explores one such structure, transference neurosis. Transference neurosis occurs when an individual is infected by the neurosis of another person, thus altering the normal defense patterns and causing a distortion in the unconscious. The therapeutic journey is charged with the task of addressing the primary injury as well as the foreign structure within the unconscious. The article will utilize the wisdom of Saint Paul, Charles Dickens, Sigmund Freud, Habib Davanloo and a case vignette in an effort to unmask and treat this destructive force.

KEYWORDS:

• Transference neurosis
• psychotherapy
• resilience
• Davanloo
• Dickens
• Saint Paul

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The italics appear in the original text.

2. The italics appear in the original text.

3. Robert Jewett, Romans (2007) provides a comprehensive review of the various factors that may have contributed to Paul’s struggles.

4. Nelson’s five models of evil appear in “Facing Evil’s Many Faces: Five Paradigms for Understanding Evil” in Interpretations, 57, no 4, Oct. 2003. They include: A Moral View; Radical Suffering; The Ambiguous Creation; Eschatological Imagination; Redemptive Suffering. It is a succinct and emotionally honest article.

5. Dickens writes two endings to the novel Great Expectations. This excerpt is contained in the first ending … Both endings conclude with a degree of rapprochement between Pip and Estella.

6. The patient agreed that the therapist could use the video and transcripts for the purposes of education and research. Some minor changes have been made in order to insure confidentiality.

7. Each session lasts for 90 minutes. The process of restricting is painstaking. The focus is on bringing the patient to a conscious awareness of the destructiveness and how her defenses are not serving her therapeutic goal.

8. The HOC accomplishes three things: “First, it puts responsibility firmly where it belongs, that is on the patient himself. Second, it is a confrontation directed at the conscious therapeutic alliance, with the implication that unless the patient makes a supreme effort to be honest he cannot be helped. And third, it contains a crucial message to the patient’s unconscious, an implied interpretation of destructive impulses both in the transference and directed by the patient toward himself” (Davanloo, 1990, p. 7).

9. This is an excerpt from the seventeenth session. It was this exchange in which the presence of a transference neurosis first became evident. The patient reacted to the therapist’s statement of fact. Essentially, the transference neurosis was attacking the UTA. In patients without a transference neurosis, underscoring the patient’s potential as well as the patient’s destructiveness would increase the UTA.

10. The underlined section appears in the original text.

11. Beeber notes that Davanloo, during his Closed Circuit Workshops (2007 – 2016), listed five categories of transference neurosis: 1. Classically, from therapy; 2. Professional Work; 3. Professional Relationships; 4. Intergenerational Transference Neurosis; 5. A combination of previous therapy and Intergenerational Transference Neurosis. (Beeber, 2016, p. 119– 121). Catherine Hickey’s Understanding Davanloo’s Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy (2017) follows the treatment of one patient who suffers with the fifth category listed by Beeber.