ABSTRACT
The Oedipus complex is a web of troubled relationships. Sigmund Freud covered the interpersonal aspect of the psychoanalytic process by the term "transference". Transference was first mentioned in Studies on Hysteria, where Freud wrote that psychotherapy patients sometimes "transferred" disturbing ideas onto himself: a "false connection" is made between the analyst and some other person. Freud held that the patient's "positive" transference provided the motive power for the psychoanalytic process. Freud recognized that the psychoanalytic process was, to a great extent, driven by suggestion (positive transference). Although he granted that psychoanalytic patients were moved by their suggestibility, Freud denied that psychoanalytic cure was based on suggestion. The theory of transference makes the relationship between analyst and patient central to the psychoanalytic process. However, it also presents a particular theorization of that relationship. In essence, the transference concept involves the notion that the patient's internal world is unconsciously and inappropriately imposed upon the psychoanalytic situation.
