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interplay of the various aspects of the objects towards which these emotions are directed instigates a vicious circle of aggression, anxiety and guilt which has to be worked through over and over again in the transference: “ There are in fact very few people in the young infant’s life, but he feels them to be a multitude of objects because they appear to him in different aspects.” (Klein,1952, p. 436). Klein asserts that analysing the negative transference is a precondition for gaining access to the deeper layers of the mind, although positive and negative transferences are always combined. Klein emphasizes the notion of unconscious phantasy in the here-and-now of the session. ‘Real’ events must always be considered, according to Klein, in their interaction with the patient’s unconscious phantasy life. Klein’s (and Susan Isaacs’s) definition of unconscious phantasy was at the heart of the Controversial Discussions in the early 1940’s and, according to Elizabeth Bott-Spillius and Ron Britton, the use of the same words for different concepts has contributed to the intensity of the debate. According to the Kleinian view, unconscious phantasy includes every early form of infantile thought - it is the mainspring of the unconscious mind and the psychic representative of drives, but it also includes other forms of thought that emerge later on, through development of the original phantasies. Transference in this view is the unconscious experience in the here-and-now, yet mapped onto the infantile mechanisms with which the patient managed his conflicts long ago. Unconscious phantasy influences and colours the experience of reality, and vice versa. Melanie Klein advocates interpreting in terms of unconscious phantasy, rather than in terms of impulse versus defence. As a result, she would consistently interpret within the transference instead of interpreting the transference itself. “One can show the patient how he experiences a relationship which gives rise to anxiety or guilt, and how he alters it in phantasy, to avoid pain.” (Segal, 1979). Klein focuses in this way on the patient’s anxieties and his relations to objects in the past and in the present, as well as on the experiences that have occurred in between. She calls this the ‘total situation’ and this includes all aspects of the patient’s experiences and phantasies, past and present, reported in the analytic session: “For instance, reports of patients about their everyday life, relations, and activities not only give an insight into the functioning of the ego, but also reveal—if we explore their unconscious content—the defences against the anxieties stirred up in the transference situation” (Klein 1952, p. 437). She deems that all material, generated through free association, is an account of the (unconsciously) split set of the relationship with the analyst. According to Donald Meltzer (1986), the analyst’s task is to ‘gather the transference’ from the myriad ways in which the relationship with the analyst can be represented. “The infantile transference gradually begins to appear in the material in the form of bits of ‘acting in’ or ‘acting out’, of memories or dreams, their recognition and investigation sets in motion the analytic process.” Betty Joseph (1985) emphasizes the importance of the ‘total situation’ as a way for patients to express their conscious and unconscious thoughts and feelings in the transference relationship. She also demonstrates how patients use the transference not only to achieve the satisfaction of impulses but also to support their defensive positions.
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