Article
Introjection and Transference
Introjektion und Übertragung
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.
Main ideas
- Transference is not peculiar to analysis but a general mechanism of the psychoneuroses, a special case of displacement.
- Introjection: the neurotic draws the outer world into the ego, the counterpart of the paranoiac's projection of it outward.
- The physician is a catalyst: the affects that attach to him in treatment are already present in the patient.
- Hypnosis and suggestion rest on the transference of infantile love for the parents and fear of them onto the hypnotist.
- Two kinds of hypnosis: a paternal hypnosis that works through fear and a maternal hypnosis that works through love.
What it shows
- 1909
Sándor Ferenczi introduced Introjection
Ferenczi coined introjection in 1909 for the neurotic's drawing of the outer world into the ego, the counterpart of the paranoiac's projection: the psychoneurotic suffers from an enlargement of the ego, the paranoiac from its shrinking.