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impossible – to speak of transference without reference to its partner. This has been a radical evolution, perhaps a paradigm shift. The view of transference as repetition of past relationships into the present and most importantly into the analytic relationship, although modified in a variety of ways – perhaps unrecognizeably so by the relational/interpersonal school (below) – remains acknowledged at its core by North American analysts today. Otto Kernberg (below) probably speaks for the great majority of North American analysts today when he writes “the analysis of transference came to be seen as the main source of specific exploration and change brought about by psychoanalytic treatment” (Kernberg 2021, p. 179). Transference analysis may well be the defining feature distinguishing psychoanalysis from other psychotherapies. Representing a further evolution of the classical ‘Ego psychology’ (Hartmann, 1939) that dominated the field in North America between approximately 1940 and 1980, ‘modern conflict theory’ (MCT) (also sometimes referred to as “conflict theory” or “classical analysis”) held fast to the view that the capacity for transference resided solely and uniquely in the mind of the analysand. This view contrasts strongly with the views of the ‘two person’ theories that hold, variously, that the transference – perhaps a misnomer in this view – or better said, the relationship is a unique de novo product of the interactions within a particular analytic dyad. A variant of this idea is that transference is co-constructed and that therefore an analysand’s apparent transference will differ depending upon who is his analytic partner. Even the use of the term “transference” can be confusing since some two-person analysts may speak of transference but exclude or minimize the importance of the repetition of the past. Whereas the two-person psychology view is that the analytic relationship is created solely or primarily from present day elements, the MCT view retains Freud’s idea that the analytic relationship will be highly influenced by transference in the sense of the patient’s repetition of his past relationships. Hence for two-person analysts nothing of importance is transferred. It would be better to speak of the analytic relationship rather than the transference. VI. C. Modern Conflict Theory The contemporary descendants of the North American Ego Psychology (see separate entries CONFLICT and EGO PSYCHOLOGY) view transference activity, with its repetitive and interactive character, in the transference-countertransference dyad as a manifestation of persistent ubiquitous unconscious fantasy, which can be understood to consist of compromise formations that may be adaptive or maladaptive, underlying neurotic symptoms and creative achievements alike. Contemporary clinical notions of ‘ hidden transferences’ and ‘ transference cycles’ (below) are examples of this school’s current complexity: Sander Abend (1993), expanding the view of ubiquity of the unconscious fantasy into its layered manifestations, identified the subtle idiosyncratic ‘hidden’ transferences onto the psychoanalytic situation ‘as a whole’. “My own clinical experience”, he wrote, “has led me to become increasingly attentive to the idiosyncratic, at times quite subtle ways in which patients construe the analytic situation in conformity with their own emotional needs. These often constitute ongoing
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