ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a brief history of the idea that transference interpretations are efficacious, indeed so efficacious that the analyst must induce a neurosis in the patient in order to be able to use this path to well-being. It reviews of some doubts about this, philosophical, practical, and theoretical. The chapter evaluates when patients are likely to engage therapists in transference phenomena, and when not. Some illustrations follow of what various people seemed to need in their therapy. The chapter identifies more closely with when transference interpretations are appropriate, and when they should be used with great caution, if at all. People who need other people around them much of the time are people whose well-being depends massively on the feelings of others towards them. A patient is talking about one rotten apple in a barrel spoiling the lot, in a story about a corrupt policeman.
