Core Concepts in Contemporary Psychoanalysis

Clinical, Research Evidence and Conceptual Critiques

Morris N. Eagle

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781138306929
• eBook ISBN: 9781351392648
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Mental Health in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

In Core Concepts in Contemporary Psychoanalysis, alongside its companion piece Core Concepts in Classical Psychoanalysis, Morris N. Eagle asks: of the core concepts and formulations of psychoanalytic theory, which ones should be retained, which should be modified and in what ways, and which should be discarded?

The key concepts and issues explored in this book include:

• Are transference interpretations necessary for positive therapeutic outcomes?
• Are the analyst's countertransference reactions a reliable guide to the patient's unconscious mental states?
• Is projective identification a coherent concept?
• Psychoanalytic styles of thinking and writing.

Unlike other previous discussions of such concepts, this book systematically evaluates them in the light of conceptual critique as well as recent research-based evidence and empirical data.

Written with Eagle's piercing clarity of voice, Core Concepts in Contemporary Psychoanalysis challenges previously unquestioned psychoanalytic assumptions and will appeal to psychoanalysts, psychoanalytic psychotherapists, and anyone interested in integrating core psychoanalytic concepts, research, and theory with other disciplines including psychiatry, psychology, and social work.

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Chapter 1
Transference

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Along with unconscious processes and defense, transference and countertransference were cited most frequently as core psychoanalytic concepts. Further, both transference and countertransference have been referred to as the “common ground” of psychoanalysis that cuts across different psychoanalytic “schools” (Gabbard, 1995; Wallerstein, 1992). Also, along with unconscious processes and defense, a good deal of empirical research has been carried out on the concept of transference.

The organization of the chapter is as follows: the first section will present different conceptions of transference from Freudian to contemporary psychoanalytic theories. The second section deals with different aspects of transference, including transference as resistance, analysis of the transference, resolution of the transference, transference and gratification, and analytic love. The third section will discuss certain conceptual issues attending the assumption that transference involves distortion. The fourth section covers selected research on transference. The fifth section discusses the clinical implications of research findings on transference. And finally, the last section presents a summary and set of conclusions.

Different conceptions of transference

I begin with a sampling of brief definitions of transference and then move on to a more detailed discussion of transference from different theoretical perspectives:

transference refers to the patient’s transfer of feelings, wishes, and reactions experienced toward an important figure from his or her childhood (usually a parental figure) onto the analyst … transference is a universal phenomenon that occurs in many spheres of life in which one’s reactions to a current person (e.g., boss, spouse) are reminiscent of early patterns.

(Eagle, 2006, p. 462)

transference is the experience of feelings, drives, attitudes, fantasies, and defenses toward a person in the present which do not befit that person but are repetitions of reactions originating in regard to significant persons in early childhood, unconsciously displaced onto figures in the present.

(Greenson, 1967, p. 171)

the displacement of patterns of feelings, thoughts, and behavior in relation to significant figures during childhood onto a person involved in a current interpersonal relationship.

(Moore & Fine, 1990)

the distortion of a realistic patient–analyst relationship by additions from past unconscious and repressed object-relations.

(Freud, 1968, pp. 95–96)

Freud’s conception of transference

Let me turn now to spell out in some detail Freud’s conception of transference.

In a relatively early paper, Freud (1905[1901]) defined transference in the following way:

They are new editions or facsimiles of the impulses and phantasies which are roused and made conscious during the progress of analysis; but they have this peculiarity, which is characteristic for their species, that they replace some earlier person by the person of the physician. To put it another way: a whole series of psychological experiences are revived, not as belonging to the past, but as applying to the person of the physician at the present moment. Some of these transferences have a content which differs from that of their model in no respect whatever except for the substitution. These then—to keep to the same metaphor —are merely new impressions or reprints. Others are more ingeniously constructed; their content has been subjected to a moderating influence—to sublimation, as I call it—and they may even become conscious, by cleverly taking advantage of some real peculiarity in the physician’s person or circumstances and attaching themselves to that. These, then, will no longer be new impressions, but revised editions.

(p. 116)

Thus, according to Freud, even when the patient reacts to some actual characteristic of the analyst, it is recruited into the transference.

In a later paper on “The dynamics of transference,” Freud (1912a) writes that the ultimate nature and source of transference is erotic. On the very first page of the paper, he notes “that each individual … has acquired a specific method of his own in his conduct of his erotic life—that is, in the preconditions to falling in love” (p. 99). It is this “specific method” or what Freud refers to as “prototype” or “stereotype plates” (p. 100) that are transferred on to the therapist. Freud further writes that “if someone’s need for love is not entirely satisfied by reality, he is bound to approach every new person whom he meets with libidinal anticipatory ideas” (p. 100).

One can see from the above citations that, according to Freud, the essence of transference is the tendency to experience the analyst (as well as contemporary figures outside the analytic situation) in terms of early significant figures from one’s past. This includes, among other things, the attribution to the current figure of various characteristics, intentions, and motives of early figures as represented in one’s mind; expectations that the current figure will behave in a way that is similar to the behavior of early figures; and the transfer of early feelings, fantasies, attitudes, and defenses on to the current figure. The feelings and attitudes noted by Freud that one transfers on to the current figure include, importantly, the assignment of a parental role such that one looks to the current figure to satisfy early needs and wishes. This aspect of transference is highlighted by Freud’s (1905[1901]) comment that “if someone’s need for love is not entirely satisfied by reality, he is bound to approach every new person whom he meets with libidinal anticipatory needs” (p. 100).

The clear implications here are: first, that transference of a parental role is more likely or perhaps more intense for individuals whose need for love has not been met; and second, that the mode of relating, that is, the “stereotype plate” that defines the transference entails actively seeking to have one’s libidinal needs met by the transference figure. As far as I know, individual differences in the threshold for transference reactions as well as intensity of transference as a function of early deprivation of libidinal needs have not been subject to clinical or empirical research. (However, see Parish & Eagle, 2003, for a study on individual differences in intensity of attachment to therapist as a function of different attachment patterns.)

Different patterns of transference

Freud (1912a) identified three patterns of transference all of which may coexist: (1) positive transference, which need not be analyzed and “which is admissible to consciousness … persists and is the vehicle of success in psychoanalysis exactly as it is in other methods of treatment” (p. 105),¹ (2) “a positive transference of repressed erotic impulses” (p. 105); and (3) a negative transference. As we know, there has been much debate regarding the “unobjectionable” positive transference, particularly the implication that it need not be analyzed (e.g., Brenner, 1979, 1982). The criticism of that concept is given weight by Freud’s (1912a) own comment that “positive transference is then further divisible into transference of friendly or affectionate feelings, which are admissible to consciousness and transference of prolongations of those feelings into unconsciousness. As regards the latter, analysis shows that they invariably go back to erotic sources.” He then writes, “we are thus led to the discovery that all the emotional relations of sympathy, friendship, trust, and the like … are genetically linked with sexuality and have developed from purely sexual desires through a softening of their sexual aim, however pure and unsensual they may appear to our conscious self-perception” (p. 105).

In one of his last papers, Freud (1940[1938]) describes transference in the following way: “the patient sees in him [i.e., the analyst] the return, the reincarnation, of some important figure out of his childhood or past, and consequently transfers on to him feelings and reactions which are undoubtedly applied to this stereotype” (p. 175). He then describes transference as “ambivalent,” which “comprises positive (affectionate) as well as negative (hostile) attitudes toward the analyst, who as a rule is put in the place of one or other of the patient’s parents, his father or mother” (p. 175).

If the origin of transference lies in the patient’s erotic life, why does hostile negative transference arise? As expressed in the following passage, Freud’s answer is that negative transference develops in response to the frustration of the patient’s erotic wishes:

His obedience to his father (if it is his father that is in question), his courting of his father’s favor, had its roots in an erotic wish directed towards him. Some time or other that demand will press its way forward in the transference as well as insist on being satisfied. In the analytic situation it can only meet with frustration. Real sexual relations between patients and analysts are out of the question, and even subtler methods of satisfaction, such as the giving of preference, intimacy and so on, are only sparingly granted by the analyst. A rejection of this kind is taken as the occasion for the change-over; probably things happened in the same way in the patient’s childhood.

(p. 176)

In Freud’s view of transference, it is of critical importance that the analyst reveals as little of himself or herself to the patient. As he puts it, “The doctor should be opaque to his patients, and like a mirror, should show them nothing but what is shown to him” (Freud, 1912a, p. 118). The analyst can thereby serve as a “blank screen” on to which the patient can project his or her feelings, thoughts, perceptions, patterns of relating, fantasies, and so on. According to this perspective, deviations from a “blank screen” stance muddy the water with regard to being able to comprehend the patient’s versus the analyst’s contributions to the former’s pattern of responses in the analytic situation.

Transference as both resistance and invaluable aid

Freud (1912a) viewed transference as both an invaluable aid to the analysis as well as “the most powerful resistance to the treatment” (p. 101). With regard to the former, the transference represents an invaluable aid in a number of ways. First, positive transference, entails the patient’s “aim of pleasing the analyst and winning his applause and love” and serves as the “true motive force of the patient’s collaboration” (Freud, 1940[1938], p. 175). What Freud referred to as the “unobjectionable positive transference” has been essentially transformed, originally in the psychoanalytic literature (e.g., Greenson, 1967) and later in the general psychotherapy literature, for example, into the concept of “therapeutic alliance.” (As we will see, there is a large research literature on the relationship between therapeutic alliance and therapeutic process and outcome.)

Second, insofar as the transference presumably repeats the past, it lays out for the analyst in vivo the patient’s neurosis (thus, the “transference neurosis”). Third, to the extent that “the patient puts the analyst in the place of his father (or mother), he is also giving him the power which his superego exercises over his ego, since his parents were, as we know, the origin of his superego. The new superego now has an opportunity for a sort of after-education of the neurotic” (p. 175). And fourth, the here-and-now immediacy of transference experiences is more likely to produce a greater sense of emotional conviction (and a counter against intellectualization) than material having to do with accounts of figures from the past. As Freud (1940[1938]) puts it, “a patient never forgets again what he has experienced in the form of transference; it carries a greater force of conviction than anything he can acquire in other ways” (p. 177). One can see from the above why analysis of the transference is given a critical role in the theory of psychoanalytic treatment (see also Strachey, 1934).

Transference constitutes a form of resistance in a number of ways. First, the transference is a quintessential example of repeating rather than remembering. Second, both negative and erotic transferences constitute resistance, the former in an obvious way. As for the latter, according to Freud (1915 [1914]), the patient’s falling in love with the analyst and wanting him or her to satisfy that love are based on infantile object choice.² Further, the patient continues the futile pursuit of the gratification of infantile wishes, this time in relation to the analyst. In this sense, one can think of the erotic transference as an expression of repeating rather than remembering, that is, as an attempt to gratify infantile wishes rather than subject them to analytic understanding.

Transference in self psychology

The traditional concept of transference has been altered in a number of ways, which reflect broader theoretical changes in contemporary psychoanalytic theories. Thus, associated with the rejection of Freudian drive theory is a corresponding rejection of the Freudian claim that the nature and ultimate source of transference is the patient’s erotic life. It appears that whatever component a particular theory posits as a fundamental factor in psychological life finds its place as the primary motivational source of transference. Or, to put it another way, whatever it is that a particular theory proposes as our fundamental longings is, according to that theory, the motive force for transference.

Thus, from a self-psychology perspective, a primary motivation underlying the development of transference is the longing to have one’s unmet needs for empathic mirroring met. This motivation is reflected in a mirroring transference. Other motivations are reflected in twinship, idealizing, and merger transferences. In all cases, transference consists of a self–selfobject relationship, the latter defined as relating to another in terms of the other’s function in contributing to one’s self-cohesiveness. As the term “selfobject” suggests, in a self–selfobject relationship, the other is neither a fully separate object nor fully a part of oneself, but is located somewhere between the two.

Although, as noted earlier, in his 1912 discussion of the sources of transference, Freud (1912a) refers to the individual’s “need for love” (p. 100), his primary emphasis is on infantile wishes rather than needs. In this regard, Freud’s conception of transference can be contrasted with Kohut’s (1984) view that the patient attempts to meet unmet developmental needs in the transference—primarily the need for empathic understanding—rather than to gratify infantile instinctual wishes. The contrast between the two perspectives is further highlighted by the difference between the Freudian idea that infantile wishes need to be either sublimated or repudiated and the Kohutian stance that unmet developmental needs should be met in the treatment (see Eagle, 1990, for a discussion of wishes versus needs in self psychology).

The contrast between Freud and Kohut, however, may not be as thoroughgoing as it appears. There is some similarity between Freud’s insistence that infantile wishes need to be renounced or repudiated and Kohut’s (1984) recognition that archaic selfobject needs for perfect mirroring cannot be met in reality. Both converge on the position that certain archaic wishes and needs cannot be realistically met in this world and to pursue them is not only chimerical, but also prolongs pathology and distress.

The degree of convergence is even greater. For insofar as, as Kohut acknowledges, the presumed need for perfect mirroring cannot possibly be met, it is best thought of as a fantasy or wish (Eagle, 1990). Thus, both Freud and Kohut appear to agree that certain wishes cannot realistically be met. They diverge in regard to what follows from the recognition of that sobering reality. For Freud, what follows is the need for either sublimation or repudiation of the impossible to gratify infantile wishes. For Kohut (1984) what follows is that, as a consequence of “repair” of self-defects (through the process of “transmuting internalization,” p. 4), the patient no longer needs perfect mirroring and can now avail himself or herself of and benefit from the less than perfect empathic mirroring that is realistically available in this world.

Fairbairn on transference

Fairbairn has relatively little to say directly about transference. In his 300-page 1952 book, there are fewer than nine pages devoted to transference, most of which are passing comments rather than focused and extensive discussions. However, it is possible to characterize his conception of transference from these comments. Fairbairn (1952) refers to the transference neurosis in terms of the patient’s fear of the “release of bad objects from the unconscious” consequent upon lifting repression (p. 69). He also writes that “the deepest source of resistance is the fear of the release of bad objects from the unconscious, for when such bad objects are released, the world around the patient becomes peopled with devils which are too terrifying for him to face (Fairbairn, 1952, p. 69). And yet, as Fairbairn (1952) notes, “there is now little doubt in my mind that the release of bad objects from the unconscious is one of the chief aims which the psychotherapist should set himself out to achieve, even at the expense of a severe ‘transference neurosis’” (p. 69).

He goes on to say that “the patient is not slow to sense that the therapeutic endeavor threatens to reproduce the situation against which his defenses are mobilized” (p. 166). Hence, it would seem inevitable that the therapist would be experienced as a bad object (i.e., the patient would form a negative transference, which Fairbairn seems to equate with the transference neurosis). However, Fairbairn (1952) also tells us that “the bad objects can only be safely released … if the analyst has become established as a sufficiently good object for the patient” (p. 70).

This state of affairs confronts the patient with a dilemma. On the one hand, she or he needs the safety provided by the therapist as a good object to safely release bad objects. And on the other hand, insofar as the therapist is someone w...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Transference
• 2 Countertransference
• 3 Projective mode of cognition, projection as a defense, and projective identification
• 4 Psychoanalytic styles of writing, thinking, and habits of mind
• 5 Some concluding comments
• References
• Index