ABSTRACT
The transference is like a shoal of fish. As a therapist peers into the passing stream, hoping to catch a glimpse of distinctive life-forms, all that appear are flashes of reflected sunlight. Then the surface ripples seem to settle. Freud begins by noting that the views he will propound may not be valid for all cases of melancholia, by which he means very serious, more or less psychotic depression. Then he makes a connection between the depressive state of melancholia and a normal state of mourning, a connection that is not at all obvious. Freud was forthright about the need to tackle psychopathology as a patient lives out his patterns of relations as these are realized vis-à-vis the analyst - that is, in the transference. Psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists differ in the emphasis they give to particular features of the transactions that take place between patient and therapist.
