Greenberg, L. Transference and Psychoanalyst’s Fear

Abstract: The author makes a suggestion that an analyst’s fear causes variety and abundance of the theories about transference. The author describes how the Freud’s conception developed from the very beginning when transference was viewed as a form of resistance, and to the moment when it was used as the basic method of therapy. Traditional and later views of the author on transference and its management are studied in the context of general conceptions existing in other schools and branches of psychology. The article also covers concepts of a negative transference. The article describes a few cases when an analyst responds to a patient’s transference by struggling with his own feelings of countertransference. The author underlines the importance of a proper training of a psychoanalyst and his experience in overcoming regressive attacks of parental projections without appealing to theoretical and technical means of defense. As the author assumes, transference is not a resistance on its own although it can be actually used in this quality. An analyst should not interpret a growing internal response to a patient’s regressive feelings just to avoid the feeling of anxiety. At the end of the article the author underlines the important of intuition, countertransference and sublimated projective counter identification.

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