Introjection and Transference

Introjection and Transference is a two-part study by Sándor Ferenczi, published in 1909 in the first volume of the Jahrbuch für psychoanalytische und psychopathologische Forschungen and issued as an offprint by Deuticke in 1910. Its subject is the neurotic's readiness to transfer. The first part treats transference as a general mechanism of the psychoneuroses, a special case of displacement, by which the neurotic draws the outer world into the ego. Ferenczi names this process introjection and sets it against the projection of the paranoiac. In treatment, on this view, the physician does not create the patient's feelings but acts as a catalyst for affects that are already present. The second part reads hypnosis and suggestion as a transference onto the hypnotist of the child's love for its parents and fear of them, and distinguishes a paternal hypnosis, which works through fear, from a maternal hypnosis, which works through love. The paper is the source of the term introjection.