ABSTRACT
This chapter is an introduction to the crucial psychoanalytic concept of transference. It argues that there are in fact three different ways of thinking about transference – and at one time or another Freud used them all. First, there is transference as the transfer of an emotion or thought from a significant figure in a person’s past onto the analyst. This is the way Freud explicitly conceptualized transference. Second, there is transference as an idiosyncratic world coming into view in the analytic situation. On this conception, one no longer takes the idea of the world for granted. And transference cannot be simply a transfer of an emotion across a given world. Rather, the idiosyncratic nature of the analysand’s world becomes a puzzle that comes to light in the analytic situation. This is what Freud was gesturing at when he describes transference as a ‘special class of mental structures.’ Third, transference is also the active disruption of this idiosyncratic world, especially as it occurs in the analytic situation. This is arguably what happened when Freud’s patient, known as Dora, abruptly terminated her treatment.
