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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 entry CONFLICT) 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: 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 experiences of transference gratification which may be very difficult for the analyst to detect, and even more difficult for the patient to surrender. There are some varieties of transference wish that are not as much subject to disappointment and frustration by the limits of the analytic situation as are others, i.e., the wish to be taken seriously by an attentive listener. This poses a technical problem that deserves further study. I believe that it is advantageous to search for such hidden transferences on a case-by-case, individual basis, without employing any potentially restrictive formula derived from the analyst’s preferred developmental schema…” (Abend, 1993, p. 644). Ellman and Moskowitz (2008) link the repetitive character of transference to seeing treatment in terms of transference cycles in relation to analytic trust, true self, conflicts and object relationships: “… each new cycle involves at least a partial renewal of analytic trust. The trust is bidirectional and the analyst’s trust of the patient involves helping or standing aside while the patient finds her or his own voice and constructs reality in his or her idiosyncratic fashion. Thus, reality is experienced as constructed … Nevertheless, the patient’s conflicts and true self are seen as mainly contained within the patient. How the interaction is constructed depends on the particular analytic pair, but we believe there is a true self that is not a construction.... Each transference cycle begins a new aspect of an object relationship in which trust is reinforced from two different directions. Initially the analyst enters the patient’s world and when a natural separation is found and tolerated, each member of the pair begins to voice their views of the relationship. Being able to utilize the other is in our mind a crucial aspect of the benefits of insight in the analytic situation ….” (p. 825).
VI. D. Interpretive Focus: Transference versus Extratransference As noted in the introduction, the question has been raised concerning to what extent is transference analysis the exclusively effective form of interpretation and its corollary, should
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