Freud, “Remembering, Repeating, and Working Through” (1914) (VI)

I concluded the last entry with an extensive quotation and a promise to discuss its significance. Let us recall the quotation, then, which has essentially to do with “transference” and its function in addressing the repetition compulsion:

“The main instrument, however, for curbing the patient's compulsion to repeat and for turning it into a motive for remembering lies in the handling of the transference. We render the compulsion harmless, and indeed useful, by giving it the right to assert itself in a definite field. We admit it into the transference as a playground in which it is allowed to expand in almost complete freedom and in which it is expected to display to us everything in the way of pathogenic instincts that is hidden in the patient's mind. Provided only that the patient shows compliance enough to respect the necessary conditions of the analysis, we regularly succeed in giving all the symptoms of the illness a new transference meaning and in replacing his ordinary neurosis by a 'transference-neurosis' of which he can be cured by the therapeutic work. The transference thus creates an intermediate region between illness and real life through which the transition from the one to the other is made. The new condition has taken over all the features of the illness; but it represents an artificial illness which is at every point accessible to our intervention. It is a piece of real experience, but one which has been made possible by especially favourable conditions, and it is of a provisional nature. From the repetitive reactions which are exhibited in the transference we are led along the familiar paths to the awakening of the memories, which appear without difficulty, as it were, after the resistance has been overcome” (154-155)

Now, I have already commented on some of the oddities of “transference,” as the concept is mobilized in this piece. For example, Freud re-describes transference as itself a “repetition” — indistinguishable, to a point, from the other repetitions found in an analysis. Moreover, to be “serviceable,” the transference must meet certain minimal conditions. In particular, the analytic situation presupposes a trusting, respectful, generally affectionate attitude in the patient. Absent this attitude, the basic “understanding” between patient and analyst — stipulating, say, that the patient not make major life decisions during the treatment — would become unworkable.

In the quoted passage, however, a broader and more internally-differentiated sense seems to accrue to the concept of “transference.” According to the first, narrower meaning, the “attachment through transference has grown into something…serviceable” (153) inasmuch as it supports the analytic situation, that is, the frame. Such a situation has effectively “put the reins of the transference” upon the patient’s “untamed instincts” (154).

But in this passage, transference plainly includes substantially more than the “minimal” ingredients of trust, regard, affection, and the like. To be sure, the analytic situation begins with these ingredients, as insurance against the more damaging types of “acting out.” Yet Freud proceeds to characterize this same transference as a “definite field,” a “playground,” an “intermediate region between illness and real life” in which “the compulsion to repeat” is able to “assert itself” or to “expand in almost complete freedom” and “display to us everything in the way of pathogenic instincts” — characterizations that exceed by some margin mere “compliance enough to respect the necessary conditions of the analysis.” It now appears that, alongside this background attitude of trusting compliance — and, in the nature of things, at loggerheads with it — analysis elicits transference phenomena from the patient, hitherto unconscious, that look rather different.

What kinds of repetitions, after all, does the analyst “admit…into the transference as a playground?” And how exactly does the situation look once these repetitions have been thus admitted? Freud does not provide any illustrations in our quotation. But earlier in the essay he listed several, as we saw in previous entries:

“For instance, the patient does not say that he remembers that he used to be defiant and critical towards his parents' authority; instead, he behaves in that way to the doctor. He does not remember how he came to a helpless and hopeless deadlock in his infantile sexual researches; but he produces a mass of confused dreams and associations, complains that he cannot succeed in anything and asserts that he is fated never to carry through what he undertakes. He does not remember having been intensely ashamed of certain sexual activities and afraid of their being found out; but he makes it clear that he is ashamed of the treatment on which he is now embarked and tries to keep it secret from everybody.” (150)

Evidently, these are the sorts of “repetition” — e.g. dynamics of defiance, confused futility, and shame — that ought to be welcomed into the arena of transference. And this must mean that each of these “repetition” dynamics or structures, by definition aspects of the patient’s presenting neurosis, must receive a reality and signification within the transference, that is, vis-à-vis the analyst. Suffice it to say, again, that these transferences will not merely differ from the trusting, friendly attachment to the analyst that grounds the analytic station as a whole; they will contradict that attitude. This contradiction, the resolution of which then defines the treatment, appears to coincide with the distinction between the patient’s “observing ego” — allied with the analyst — and her more-or-less ego-alien “observed ego.” But this suggests that, when a given repetition first emerges in the transference — say, when the patient’s “friendly attachment” to the analyst is first clouded by a “defiant and critical” attitude — it is precisely ego-syntonic. The patient does not conceive it as a “repetition” at all, but as a feeling towards the analyst quite as “realistic” and “well founded” as the friendly attachment itself.

What begins as an affectionate transference, then, must as a rule become tainted by the very “subversive” ingredients — “pathogenic instincts” — invited into it. Indeed, the introduction of these ingredients will, it seems, strain that respectful affection to its breaking point, to the extent that it become nothing “more” positive than a grudging submission to an onerous obligation. Again:

“Provided only that the patient shows compliance enough to respect the necessary conditions of the analysis, we regularly succeed in giving all the symptoms of the illness a new transference meaning and in replacing his ordinary neurosis by a ‘transference-neurosis’ of which he can be cured by the therapeutic work.”

Implied in the first part of this formula is the notion that, if the patient merely respects the frame — “the necessary conditions of the analysis”— then nothing more need be demanded from him in the way of positive regard and, in fact, everything in the way of “negative,” or at least “problematic” regard should be welcomed.

The second part of this formula, of course, goes beyond the — already considerable — claims of Freud’s argument thus far. Not only, that is, will (a) neuroses manifest themselves as “repetitions” of configurations and dynamics from a repressed past. And not only (b) will analysis excite these repetitions as “resistances” that — inevitably, it seems — increasingly pertain to the person of the analyst, that is, will bear a “transference” meaning. Beyond this, Freud is suggesting that (c) once these aspects of the analysis are in place, the whole ensemble qualifies as a new and artificial neurosis — a “transference neurosis” — that both reproduces in domesticated miniature the illness as a whole, while also replacing that whole. Moreover, and most crucially of all, we are told that (d) this replacement, which collects the elements of the original neurosis into a transference neurosis, is for just that reason temporary, because amenable to analytic influence. As Freud continues:

“[W]e regularly succeed in…replacing his ordinary neurosis by a 'transference-neurosis' of which he can be cured by the therapeutic work. The transference thus creates an intermediate region between illness and real life through which the transition from the one to the other is made. The new condition has taken over all the features of the illness; but it represents an artificial illness which is at every point accessible to our intervention. It is a piece of real experience, but one which has been made possible by especially favourable conditions, and it is of a provisional nature.” (my italics)

All of this, of course, is stated abstractly and dogmatically here. For Freud’s own clarifications, illustrations, and defenses of the “transference neurosis,” we would need to look to other places in his writings. (The editors themselves refer us to Lecture XXVII in the Introductory Lectures.) But in her book Transference Neurosis and Psychoanalytic Experience, Gail Reed helpfully summarizes the transference neurosis as

“a particular and organized development of the transference in the course of psychoanalytic treatment. The transference neurosis was seen as an illness centered uniquely on the psychoanalyst. The treatment became a situation in which the repressed libidinal impulses and related hurts and frustrations originating in the soil of childhood oedipal conflicts could flower. Once they emerged from repression, inevitably attracted by the presence of the analyst as a substitute object representation for loved and frustrating oedipal objects, their energy could be liberated for a healthier deployment in reality. The transference neurosis represented an illness necessary to cure” (1-2)

Whether and how such an “artificial illness” is possible I will not discuss here. Nevertheless, what this hypothetical entity involves is now clear enough, at least in a rough way. So, to recall Freud’s own example: we will not be surprised when a patient who “used to be defiant and critical towards his parents’ authority” at some point “behaves in that way to the doctor.” Indeed, assuming that such a “defiant and critical” attitude is inseparable from the patient’s presenting neurosis, we will expect it eventually to “attach” to the analyst in an intense, concentrated way. If I understand him correctly, Freud believes that essentially all the unconscious impulses, energies, and dynamics are thus reactivated vis-à-vis the analyst — in the transference — so that, liberated in this guise from repression, there is essentially nothing “left over” to sustain the original neurosis. Again, whether or not this is correct — whether, indeed, it assorts with Freud’s later, evidently more cautious position in, for example, “Analysis Terminable and Interminable” — are questions I will leave for another time.