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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” 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 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 “cry of fire […] raised during a theatrical performance” kind he described in the 1915 paper (Freud, 1915). Whereas in the first, it is a matter of reproducing something that was already formed and ready to be projected on the analyst, in the second, it is truly an unprecedented event: the patient would not wish for analysis any more nor wants to “know” anything regarding “meaning”. The difference between the two is more clearly stated if we say, following Laplanche, that we have: In the first kind of transference – a “filled-in” transference – the patient tends to repeat what was already noticeable in her own previous relationships to significant figures. This form lends itself all too easily to interpretation (e.g. “you reject my interpretations just like you rejected your father’s advice…”), but does not bring us very far into the heart of the matter. In the second and most important kind of transference – a “hollow” (or “hollowed-out”) transference, where neither the patient nor the analyst has any notion of what is being repeated: the analysand is experiencing the fact of being confronted with the enigmas that puzzled her in the past. What is “repeated” here has never actually been experienced in a subjectively comprehensible way before. This is very close, if not identical, with what Winnicott reports in his famous paper “Fear of breakdown” (Winnicott, 1974; see also Clare Winnicott, 1980) wherein something happened in the past but there was no “I” to register it. As a result, it must be experienced for the first time in the analysis in order to become something of the past. This is therefore the most important sort of transference, one where what lurks in a badly unrepresented form has to be lived through and worked through for the first time in the patient’s life.
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