Back to Table of Contents
Among those who challenged the exclusive focus on transference interpretations from the contemporary Freudian point of view was Harold Blum (1983, 1992, 2003, 2016). Representing majority of North American analysts, he holds that the interpretation of the corresponding unconscious conflict, including extratransference relationship can be helpful when the affective dominance is located there. Eventually, however, major pathogenic unconscious conflicts tend to be anchored in characterological defensive structures that will become transference resistances. In the words of Otto F. Kernberg , who constructed theory of Object Relations within the framework of Contemporary Freudian theory-Ego psychology, systematic analysis of the transference is widely viewed as “the essential, but not exclusive focus of the analyst’s interpretive activity” (Kernberg, 2016a, p. 54). The Kleinian approach has always tended to maximize systematic transference analysis, but the trend has today also evolved in both ego psychological and relational approaches. French analysis, too, has increased this aspect of the work. Recently, the importance of working in the here and now, in the context of the ego psychological approach of Fred Busch (2013), working within the transference and countertransference, highlighting the importance of building representations and structure resonates with the work of Green (1974) and other French theorists, but also with Joseph (1985) and Madeleine Baranger (1993). VI. E. Object Relations Approaches – Advanced and Archaic Transferential Configurations Since 1970’s, Otto Kernberg has studied transference manifestations in the wide spectrum of personality organizations (Kernberg, Burstein, Coyne et al. 1972; Kernberg 1975; Kernberg 1985; Kernberg 2004) and contributed the specific modifications of psychoanalytic technique in Transference Focused Psychotherapy (Kernberg, Yeomans, Clarkin et al., 2008; 2016a, b; 2021) for this widened scope of clinical conditions . In Transference Focused Psychotherapy (TFP), he outlines the paradigm of overtly focusing on the borderline patient’s transference responses, yet closely internally monitoring the analyst’s countertransference. In this model, the analyst interprets from the position of the “excluded third”, interpretatively commenting on the interaction of both participants in the dialogue (Kernberg 2015, p. 45). Addressing the nature of transference regression, he delineated the conceptualization of primitive, early, archaic object relations-determined transferences, in contrast to later, advanced oedipal transferences. He conceptualized how, in archaic personality organizations, oedipal and pre-oedipal conflicts tend to be condensed in regressive transferences with dominance of aggressive developments, in contrast to clearer differentiation of stage of development in less regressive transferences with dominance of infantile sexual conflicts. In the light of contemporary object relations theory, the understanding of identificatory and projective aspects of transference developments, as in those seen in the treatment of severe personality disorders, has been clarified and enriched. In the case of neurotic personality organization, the predominant enactments in the transference/countertransference binds that
1078
Made with FlippingBook - professional solution for displaying marketing and sales documents online