When defining a concept, the concept is attached to one or more certain contextual parameters or variables which provide the boundaries of the concept, and based on these conceptual boundaries which in turn are based on the particular variable-parameters specified, gives the concept its definition.
Freud (1895, Studies in Hysteria) originally defined 'transference' as a 'false connection' (where a person confuses or distorts the characteristics of a person in the here-and-now that he or she is relating to -- usually the therapist/analyst within the context of the therapeutic relationship -- with a person from the past -- usually one of the client's parents. Thus, the idea of 'false connection' became the original defining variable/parameter of the concept of transference.)
A new concept, transference, was born in psychoanalysis -- and a very important one -- indeed, from my perspective, a concept that was to become more important than Freud's earlier concept of 'repression'.
My work on transference is a mixture of the orthodox and the unorthodox. Some of it is supported by the work of Freud -- and the likes of Melanie Klein, Anna Freud, Ronald Fairbairn, Eric Berne, Arthur Janov, Brian Bird...
For other parts of it, I have stepped outside of the realm of psychoanalysis and entered into the realm of Adlerian Psychology (Alfred Adler), Gestalt Therapy (Fritz Perls), Transactional Analysis (Eric Berne), Primal Therapy (Arthur Janov) to find parts of the answers I have been looking for to certain otherwise unanswered questions. For example, Is transference a form of intended self-psychotherapy? Or is it a manifestation of the destructive-death instinct at work? Or are there elements of both tendencies at work in the same 'obsessive-compulsive' process?
Paradoxically, transference can be both therapeutic and/or pathological at the same or different times. It all depends on how it is being acted out, and what exactly is coming out of our 'transference complexes'.
Are we getting on the same roller coaster ride over and over again without even being consciously aware of what we are doing, and how we are doing it? And will there ever come a time where we say to ourselves: I don't want to get on this roller coaster ride anymore. It hurts too much when the roller coaster ride goes awry and I am left with 'emotional parts' strewn all over the 'bottom of the roller coaster'.
There is also the question of how, exactly, transference theory relates to the broader parameter of personality theory. And more questions: How does transference theory relate to traumacy theory and fantasy theory? And how does transference theory relate to Object Relations and Self Psychology as well as Classical Theory? And can we draw a connection between transference theory and elements of Bionian Traumacy Theory? These questions, we will come back and answer shortly.
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Added Nov. 17th, 2012...below....and a happy birthday to my sister, Trish Bain...
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But first, I have another essay I wish to write that takes me back to a number of essays and a line of thinking that I began to develop a couple of years ago.
I found one of these essays in my archives, dated June 17th, 2011,
On Dialectic (Transference) Complexes, Gods and Archetypes, Mythologies, The Id, The Instincts/Impulses, and Their Many Viscisitudes (Mutations, Defenses, and Compromise-Formations)...
Here is another one, dated January 15th, 2011...
Floor 2: Gods, Myths, Archetypes, Philosophers, and Psychologists: Room 201: What Are Gods?
There are one or two more out there from the same time period that explore this same theme...I just added the word 'transference' to the first title listed above...
I will be back shortly to pick up the trail that I am leaving you in 'the midst of the woods' here...
To be continued...
-- dgb, November 17th, 2012
-- David Gordon Bain,
