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the session. This is different from the historical re-construction that can take place later, a posteriori. Countertransference neurosis constitutes an obstacle for the analyst, whereas countertransference, considered as a part of the pair transference-countertransference, is a worthy element for the clinical work. Freud underlines the resistance accompanying the emergence of the fundamental transferences of parental imagos, which inevitably develop in the analysis and which, unless adequately resolved and interpreted, result in ‘transference love’, a tragedy that can destroy the treatment. Such was the emblematic case of Anna O, a patient of Breuer’s who, led by his resistance to acknowledge the sexual aetiology of neurosis, ended his collaboration with Freud. This resistance, generated by the counter-transference neurosis, postponed the development of the analytic therapy in its first decade. The consideration of the ‘fundamental sexual transferences’ requires a definition of the theoretical position with regard to the Oedipus complex, which includes two different structures (as remarked above): one takes place with the grandiose, original parents, which Cesio calls ‘Oedipal tragedy’, that of incest with its narcissistic, passionate, tragic nature: a sealed unit formed by parricide, incest and castration, which as a rule remains buried and returns by means of a tragic representation. The other, the Oedipus complex proper, is characterized by an ambivalent relationship with the father, tenderness towards the mother, and the castration complex, and results from working through the former structure with the parents of personal history. Its fate is repression and may return as psychoneurotic symptoms. In the chapter III of “The Ego and the Id”, Freud (1923) refers to a primary oedipal structure in the foundations of the psyche, the oedipal fantasies that create the first identifications, the effects of which will be universal and lasting, and which lead us back to the genesis of the Ego ideal through a first and most important identification in the individual which takes place with the great, undifferentiated parents of personal pre-history. Therefore, the oedipal tragedy and the variations in the positive and the negative complex with its singular resolution will be revealed during the analysis of transference. The tragic oedipal nature of the negative therapeutic reaction and of the emergence, from its foundations, of the affect known as ‘transference love’, overflows the limits of the psychoanalytic setting (Cesio, 1993). This love only seeks absolute possession of the object, thus showing its drive-like nature, to the point of destroying it, and at the same time bringing about self-destruction. Cesio claims that it seeks to realize the ‘wonderful baby’-phallus, which finds in death its highest expression. What is now manifested in transference love is ‘the dead’, what was buried in the unconscious and appears in the form of this narcissistic expression: The ‘wonderful baby-phallus’ reappears, in transference, as the constitution of the wonderful patient-analyst couple. The analytic setting, based on abstinence, repeats the original frustration for both members of the tragic scene that is being displayed: ‘need and longing’ must be turned
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