Les exèquies del bisbe titular

Eighteen months after the paper on 'Wild Psychoanalysis' and the formation of the International Psycho-Analytical Society, Freud embarked on a series of six papers on the technique of psychoanalysis. He finished them just before the outbreak of the first world war. Four of the series share the common title of 'Recommendations (or Further) Recommendations to Physicians Practising Psycho-Analysis'. Two address the question of transference and are respectively entitled 'The Dynamics of Transference' (1912) and 'Observations on Transference- L o v e . ' (1915). The series illustrates the interplay between technical and conceptual developments.

In 'The Dynamics of Transference',1 Freud drew an important distinction between the 'mechanism' of transference and the 'dynamics' of transference as played out in the transference relationship. The mechanism of transference originated in the readiness of the libido for transference which was still dominated by the 'infantile imagos'. However, the constant activation of the transference in the treatment relationship was explained by its relation to resistance. Freud introduced the concept of 'a stereotype plate' - like a stencil - to describe the origins of the mechanism of transference. Each person, 'through the combined operation of his innate disposition and the influences brought to bear on him during his early years, has acquired a specific method of his own in his conduct of his erotic life - that is, in the preconditions to falling in love which he lays down, in the instincts he satisfies and the aims he sets himself

(1) Freud, S . (1912). The dynamics of transference. SE12,97 .

in the course of it.'2 The 'stereotype plate...is constantly reprinted afresh - in the course of the person's life, so far as external circumstances and the nature of the love-objects accessible to him permit...' But, Freud declared, this plate 'is certainly not entirely insusceptible to change in the face of recent experi­ ences.'3 Although many authors have charged Freud with holding an extreme view of psychic determinism, in this passage Freud explicitly states that the 'stereotype plate' is modifiable.

Only a p o r t i o n . however, of the erotic or love impulses which formed the plate reached maturity and were directed towards reality and used by the conscious personality. The remainder had either 'been prevented from further expansion except in phantasy or has remained wholly in the unconscious so that it is unknown to the personality's consciousness.'4 It was not surprising, Freud concluded, that this remainder, constituting the unsatisfied part of a person's need for love or 'libidinal cathexis', was directed to the figure of the doctor. This cathexis 'attaches itself to one of the stereotype plates which are present in the subject', thereby introducing the doctor into 'one of the psychical "series" which the patient has already formed.'5

In the series of papers on technique, Freud again systematised his ideas on transference, dreams and neurotic symptoms. The irrational and distorted transferences onto the analyst stood in the same relation to the peremptory unconscious ideas as dreams and symptoms. The peculiarities of the transference rela-

(2) Freud, S. (1912) . The dynamics of transference. S E 1 2 ,99-100.

(3) Freud, S . (1912). The dynamics of transference. S E 1 2 ,100.

(4) Freud, S . (1912). The dynamics of transference. S E 1 2 ,100.

(5) Freud, S . (1912). The dynamics of transference. SE12, 1 0 0

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tionship could be explained by the fact that the transference was 'set up' both by the 'conscious anticipatory ideas' and by those ideas which 'are held back or are unconscious' . The dream was the paradigm of the vicissitudes of transference in which the patient's manifest behaviour represented a compromise - under the censorships - between unconscious wishes and resistance. Freud remarked that, outside analysis, transference is regarded as a vehicle of cure and the condition of success. In analysis, however, the figure of the doctor stood in the place of the dream censor so that a struggle was bound to break out between 'the demands of the unconscious and the work of investigation. ' Like the dream-content, the 'transference idea has penetrated into consciousness in front of any other possible associations

because it satisfies the resistance.'6 As more and more of the patient's distortions or compromise-formations were uncovered during the treatment, 'the more consistently does he make use of the one sort of distortion which obviously affords him the greatest advantages - distortion through transference. These circumstances tend towards a situation in which finally every conflict has to be fought out in the sphere of transference.'7 In this passage, where Freud described the process of 'distortion through transference', we see the origins of the idea of transference as distortion.

In the paper 'The Dynamics of Transference', Freud made a number of conceptual innovations: this was the first time that Freud defined the affectionate and hostile feelings towards the analyst as 'positive' and 'negative' transferences; in addition, he linked the negative transference with his dual instinct theory. Freud stated that the patient's use of transference as resistance could only be understood if the two types of transference were treated separately. Otherwise, it made no sense that

(6) Freud, S . (1912). The dynamics of transference. SE12, 103 .

(7) Freud, S. (1912). The dynamics of transference. SE12, 104 .

transference-resistances arose so persistently within the kind of devoted and dependent relationship patients formed with their analysts. Freud further divided positive transference into the transference of friendly feelings which were admissible into consciousness and the transference of erotic feelings which were unconscious. The solution to the puzzle of the patient's resistance was, therefore, 'that transference to the doctor is suitable for resistance to the treatment only in so far as it is a negative transference or a positive transference of repressed erotic impulses.' Thus, though the friendly aspect of the positive transference facilitated the treatment, the erotic and hostile transferences defeated analytic investigation. Since Freud, many analysts have disputed Freud's belief in the 'unobjectionable' nature of the positive transference; they point out that positive transferences often conceal deep resistances and require rigorous interpretation. Although Freud linked the genesis of the negative transference with normal ambivalence towards a figure who is both loved and hated, he also postulated an 'early separation of the pairs of opposites' in obsessional neurotics. He claimed that this separation of the pairs of opposites was characteristic of their instinctual life and one of their constitutional preconditions.

In addition to the historical conflicts which were replayed in the transference-relationship, transference- resistance arose 'from the psychological situation in which the treatment places the patient'.8 The patient resisted the fundamental rule - to free-associate because the struggle between doctor and patient recapitulated a fundamental human conflict between understanding and seeking to act, between intellectual and instinctual life. The transference relationship was the stage on which patient and analyst wrestled with two different kinds of communication. On the one hand, there was 'the real relation to the doctor' and the 'real

(8) Freud, S. (1912). The dynamics of transference. SE12,107 .

situation' of the treatment to which the patient had com­ mitted himself: he consciously intended to follow the rules of free-association and to submit his instinctual impulses to intellectual consideration. On the other hand, he 'forgets' these intentions and, 'flung out of his real relation to his doctor', 'seeks to put his passions into action without taking any account of the real

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s i t u a t i o n . A c c o r d i n g to Freud, unconscious impulses ’do