ABSTRACT
Negativising transferences—or transferences of the negative—need to be distinguished from negative transferences in the strict meaning of the term. They are associated with a negativisation of the transference that can be hard to counter, and they neutralise the process by annihilating its transformative capacity, draining it of energy, and robbing it of its fertility, where the resultant sterility ends up working counter to the process. The transference link seems to have become so massive that transference to the object works as an obstacle to the transference of representations, thereby “preventing any form of linking or unlinking”. Negativising transferences are associated with painful anxieties of separation and intrusion, or primary anxieties generating what can be insurmountable resistance. Margaret Little, a training analyst with the British Society, gives an illustration of the early stages of a painful transference in her account of the beginning of her analysis with D. W. Winnicott.
