ABSTRACT
This chapter explores more deeply the mystery of transference. It suggests that what analysts call transference involves the transfer of knowledge and the creation of expert systems. Addressing the relationship between psychoanalytic transference, the judgment of similarity, and the priming of memory processes, therefore, should help us bridge psychoanalysis, cognitive psychology, and neuroscience, bringing us a step closer to a basic scientific understanding of how mind and brain work. Reasoning by analogy, one reasonable inference is that the psychoanalytic transference represents a critical early stage or "probe" in the initial surface-matching process, which might or might not be borne out by further, costly similarity-mapping computations. D. Gentner's work on similarity posits a central importance for similarity judgment as a process at the core of human cognition. Psychology is learning about similarity just as neuroscience is learning about priming. Finally, regarding neuroscience, the priming of memory generally refers to the effect of perception on recall within specific brain memory systems.
