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translation’ and ‘ re-translation’ allows the analysand to ‘re-appropriate’ excluded messages (Laplanche, 1991 [1999]). From this perspective ‘mourning is the paradigm of symbolization’. Transference as a process – along with dreaming – works in the opposite direction to mourning. To repeat in the transference, means to try and retrieve the lost object (or relationship) rather than mourning and symbolizing it; therefore, the transference works in the same direction as the dream: both tend to deny absence; they tend to re-present (present anew) what could not be symbolized; hence, they both work in the opposite direction of mourning. This means that transference and dreaming share a ‘hallucinatory’ quality in that they tend to shape the experience according to unconscious schemas of wishes fulfilled rather than acknowledging the reality of absence or loss. V. D. Laplanche and Freud: a reading in French Canada Dominique Scarfone , a representative of an influential strand of thought in French Canada maintains transference as indeed the most important and most distinctive feature of psychoanalytic treatment. From this perspective partially inspired by Jean Laplanche’s writings, taking transference into account is what makes the treatment ‘psychoanalytic’. Moreover, no ‘genetic’ reconstruction of the patient’s story will have as much weight as what is brought to life within the transference. Transference is viewed as one of the strongest forms of resistance to, and the most effective instrument of, the work of analysis. While transference is a form of resistance in that it tends toward repetition within the relationship to the analyst instead of ‘remembering’, the term ‘remembering’ must be understood not as a process of recovering memories but rather as one of reconstructing one’s own psyche. (Scarfone, 2011) Scarfone recognizes two kinds of transference. The first is a basic, positive transference towards the analyst as a trustworthy professional who is believed to be in the service of the patient’s longterm interests. This was called by Freud a ‘paternal’/parental, ‘affectionate’ transference, but this is not what matters most. The important thing is that without this baseline transference, analysis is not possible. (It is the basis of the therapeutic and working alliance, in the English speaking North American vocabulary). This positive transference is not a resistance and should not be interpreted. Uninterpreted, it is left to work in favour of the on-going process of analysis. The second kind is termed “transference proper”: this is the transference that stands as a resistance, no matter if it is negative (hostile) or ‘positive’ (e.g. strongly erotic or passionate) transference. This transference proper itself subdivides into two sub-classes which can be found in Freud: on the one hand, the ‘prototypes’ described by Freud in the 1912 paper (Freud, 1912); on the other hand, the kind Freud described as a “cry of fire…raised during a theatrical performance” which Freud (Freud, 1915, p.162). Whereas in the first instance, transference is a matter of reproducing something that was already formed and ready to be projected/displaced
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