Concept
Transference
Feelings, wishes and ways of relating from earlier relationships, especially with parents, redirected onto the analyst.
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- Psychotic transference
- Introduced by
- Sigmund Freud
- Key works
- 10
developed by
- Sigmund Freud 1905 In the postscript to the Dora case, traces the end of the treatment to a transference he had not mastered in time.
- Sigmund Freud 1912 Distinguishes positive from negative transference and treats transference as the most powerful resistance to treatment.
- Sigmund Freud 1915 Treats the patient’s love for the analyst as transference, to be neither gratified nor suppressed.
gave rise to
- Countertransference 1910
- Parataxic distortion Sullivan put his own term in place of Freud's transference and widened it: parataxic distortion colours every relationship, not only the patient's relation to the analyst.
reworked by
- Melanie Klein 1952 Roots transference in the earliest object relations and treats it as a ‘total situation’ carried from past to present.
- Jacques Lacan 1964 Locates transference in the analyst’s position as the ‘subject supposed to know’ (Seminar XI, given 1964, published 1973).
- Heinz Kohut 1971 Describes mirror and idealizing transferences in narcissistic personality disorders.