The analyst must discover and show the patient how to make what is unconscious become conscious. The analyst’s knowledge of the patient’s unconscious is not equal to the patient’s. Freud advises that the analyst’s knowledge must run beside the patient’s rather than acting as a replacement. To explain this interaction between roles, Freud uses the metaphor of a student looking through a microscope, who can only see and, therefore, make sense of what is there with the help of the teacher’s guidance and rules. At first, the patient is either an eager student, who accepts and follows the principles of psychoanalysis, or a hostile subject, who rejects the therapist’s interpretations and advice. Freud does describe a third type of ‘student’, that who is indifferent to the process of analysis. Freud identifies the third type as paranoics, melancholics or sufferers of dementia praecox, these are ‘narcissistic neuroses’ and remain unaffected by psychoanalytic procedures. Psychoanalysis does have the potential to cure those subjects who have developed hysteria, anxiety hysteria or obsessional neurosis. These three illnesses are termed as ‘transference neuroses’ because, according to Freud, they are susceptible to transference (Freud, 1916-7).
Transference: a therapeutic tool
Freud learned from his colleague that within the ‘talking cure’, Anna. O had developed “powerful feeling and wishes” (Esman, 1990, p.3) toward Breuer. Anna. O had claimed she was pregnant with Breuer’s child and though this revelation had caused Breuer himself much distress (Freud,1935; Breger,2000)
Freud began to review the incident as an aid to the therapeutic treatment, "Psychoanalytic treatment does not create transferences, it merely brings them to light like so many other hidden psychical factors" (Freud, 1905, p.117, emphasis in original).
Freud stressed that these feelings are a spontaneous product of the analytic situation and placed ultimate importance on the analyst’s ability to ‘manage’ this phenomenon, lest it should destroy the treatment (Freud, 1912). Freud believed that as the unconscious material is made conscious, there is a revival of the original pathogenic conflict and “…the libido (whether wholly or in part) has entered on a regressive course” (Freud, 1912) due to unsatisfied libidinal impulses (Strachey, 1990).
The nature of the analysis must then be one of detection; the libido must be exposed from its place of hiding. This is not an easy task and the forces, which originally caused the libido to regress, now strongly resist the work of the analysis. Instead of remembering, the patient follows a path of repetition and begins to ‘act out’ the old conflict within the present situation. Freud states that the illness must be treated “… not as an event of the past, but as a present-day force” (Freud, 1914, p.151).
The patient remembers the old conflict by repeating or ‘acting out’ within the therapeutic situation, transferring infantile feelings linked to the past onto the analyst.
Through the figure of the doctor, the patient’s libidinal anticipatory ideas, socially unacceptable unconscious wishes and desires, can achieve cathexis (Freud, 1912).
With resistance, there may come a period of deterioration as “new and deeper-lying instinctual impulses” (Freud, 1914,p.153) come to the fore. The analyst must awaken the patient from his state of repetition by uncovering and exposing the resistance and, therefore, eliminating the transference since "...the part transference plays in the treatment can only be explained if we enter into its relations with resistance" (Freud,1912).
The transference allows for an artificial illness, called ‘transference neurosis’, to replace the original illness and in this way, the therapist can access and revise the original and unsuccessful method, which was used to deal with the libido’s rejection of reality.
Freud argued that this transference of feelings, which he owed to the patient, could ‘facilitate’ the therapeutic process if they are interpreted rather than ignored or rejected (Freud,1912).
The analyst must distinguish whether feelings are affectionate or hostile in
nature. The dyadic nature of transference calls for two separate processes of
interpretation. Affectionate behaviour is classed as positive transference and hostile behaviour as negative transference.
Positive transference occurs when the patient develops a special interest in
the analyst. At first they understand the interpretation, become engrossed
in the tasks set by the treatment and form certainty in the interpretations.
However, the patient moves towards behaving as if they are outside the
treatment and fails to accept all the psychoanalytical innovations that were
so readily accepted before. The analysts realises that the patient is
withholding and that they have fallen to resistance.
Negative transference, particularly evident in male patients, is created by hostile and unaffectionate feelings towards the therapist. Freud witnesses this form of transference in his analysis of Dora (1905), who often rejected his interpretations and later, abruptly terminated her session with him.
Counter-transference
Freud’s analysis of Dora (1905) not only caused him to reflect upon her reaction and feelings toward him but also to question his attitude towards her. ‘Counter-transference’ is when the therapist transfers feelings onto the patient and Freud requested that this be avoided, calling for self-analysis (Freud,1910) and training analysis (Freud,1912) as a method of prevention. Later psychoanalytic theorists, such as Melanie Klein, declared that counter-transference could also be a useful therapeutic tool rather than a danger to the analysis (Hinshelwood,1991). Neo-Freudians who follow this idea have founded a more interpersonal approach to psychoanalysis (Frosh, 1987), which Freud avoided by opting for an opaque or “cold approach” (Ferenzi,1933/1999)
Transference in Cyberspace
As a professor at Rider University in New Jersey, Suler (2002) has studied the relationship between psychoanalysis and computers, particularly the Internet. He explains that "In psychoanalytic terms, computers and cyberspace may become a type of "transitional space" that is an extension of the individual's intrapsychic
world."
When we interact with others online, we often blend with them and filter them through our “infantile imagos” (Freud,1914) or the templates we create from our relationships with family members in infancy. This is active transference which is aided by the ambiguous nature of the machine, much like the ‘blank screen’ the analyst represents in the therapeutic situation (Frosh,1987).
“Healthy online relationships are those in which we realize that our
perceptions are not always accurate. Other people are other people, not
extensions of our beliefs or ghosts in our machine. Given the complexities
of transference reactions, this isn't always easy to do. As Otto Kernberg
was fond of saying about unravelling transference in psychotherapy, one must
continually ask, ‘Who is doing what to whom?’” (Suler,2002, )
One cannot escape “the centrality of transference in the theory and practice of psychoanalysis” (Frosh, 1987, p.239) as well as in everyday life (Frosh,1987).
REFERENCES
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Esman, A.H. (ed.) (1990) Essential Papers on Transference. New York: New York University Press
Ferenzi, (1933/1999) Selected Writings London: Penguin Books
Freud, S. (1896). The aetiology of hysteria., S.E., 3:191-221.
Freud, S. (1905). Fragment of an analysis of a case of hysteria., S.E., 7:7-122.
Freud, S. (1910). Five lectures on psycho-analysis., S.E., 11:9-55.
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Freud, S (Strachey, J., trans.) (1935). An Autobiographical Study. London: Hogarth Press.
Frosh, S. (1987). The Politics of Psychoanalysis: An introduction to Freudian and Post-Freudian Theory. London: Yale University Press
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(article orig. pub. 1996)
