ABSTRACT
Transference is one of the fundamental concepts of psychoanalysis – and even today it is not well understood. Freud introduces the idea at the beginning of his career, in the Studies on hysteria (1895). ‘Transference onto the physician,’ he says, ‘takes place through a false connection.’ A patient experienced a desire that Freud should give her a kiss. ‘She was horrified at it, spent a sleepless night, and at the next session, though she did not refuse to be treated, was quite useless for work.’ In the analysis Freud discovered that the patient had in the past experienced that same desire towards another man – and that desire was being re-experienced in the analytic situation.
