Transference (Psychology)

After giving an introductory outline of the phenomenology and theoretical aspects of the concept "love affair", the author proceeds to review a number of symptomatic love affairs arising in the lives of a series of female patients during the course of analytically oriented psychotherapy.. The material is presented in its general aspects and in the form of one detailed case history. In subsequent discussion the author attempts to explain the genesis of these love affairs in terms of phase-speciifc conflicts in the patient and certain iatrogenic aspects of the therapy.

Sex sterotypes, clinical observations, and psychoanalytic theory of sex differences are presented. Stereotypes show differences in areas of inhibition and clinical observations, differences related to the phallic and genital phases in psychosexual development. Divergent analytical views on the sexual development of boys and girls are discussed.

Even those aspects of transference which initially favor the analytic process and seem to have the least connection with resistance do become integral parts of the transference neurosis and contribute massively to some of the most subtle difficulties in the process, especially in its resolution. These phenomena are, by their very appearance of rationality and cooperation, all the more difficult to bring under analytic scrutiny.

Plato and Freud transformed our way of looking at love. In Plato's Dialogues one can trace the transition and transformation of the mythical view on love into philosophical conceptualizations. The waning of the mythical point of view created the demand for man to know himself, and love became a puzzle. Plato was the first to propose that erotic impulses can undergo sublimation to higher and desexualized aims.

Three distinct constructions of transference which have related though differentiable histories can be identified in Freud's writings. The postulation of discrete metapsychological, clinical, and universal constructions was completed by 1915, although many significant revisions within those constructions were made thereafter.

21 women consulting for bulimia were followed in individual psychotherapy and assessed for family background characteristics. Two sets of data are reported: objective data concerning the incidence of 'broken homes', i.e., with a history of separation or divorce or death of parents; subjective data concerning the image of the family and the identifications which are worked through in psychotherapy.

This paper discusses transference love, its place among other transference reactions, and other forms of love. It attempts to resolve two questions: (1) whether transference love is essentially similar to love in real life or is fundamentally different and (2) whether if it is different, it can be seen as a transitory form of love that will enable the analysand to transfer to a new object significantly better than he or she would have been able to had psychoanalysis not interfered.

Although the erotic transference is believed to be universal, it is variable in its expression. Drawing on the distinction between transference resistance and resistance to the awareness of the transference, I have proposed that, in general, the erotic transference utilized as resistance is more common among women, while resistance to the awareness of the erotic transference is more common among male patients. Erotic transference as resistance poses different analytic problems from those posed by resistance to its awareness.

Erotic transferences occur on a spectrum reflecting the ease or difficulty of their management. They represent sexualized re-enactments of important childhood relationships. This phase in psychotherapy may be a transient developmental feature or in some instances, assume a formidable resistance to further insightful work. Two case illustrations are given to indicate the breadth of this spectrum. Reasons are discussed for such differences in erotic transferences and their resolutions.

The last five decades of the American cinema have produced a remarkably consistent stereotype of the female analyst. In films such as Spellbound (1945), Knock on Wood (1954), Sex and the Single Girl (1964), They Might be Giants (1971), and The Man Who Loved Women (1983), women analysts are swept away by countertransference love that leads them to become sexually or romantically involved with their male patients.