ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the rationale for a formulation of transference from the viewpoint of free association and demonstrates the clinical distinctions it facilitates. Transference, like resistance, is inferred and therefore requires definition of its limits. The analyst must find a means to combine the experience of transference with a capacity to sustain his own sense of reality and his intention to assist the patient to enhance the free associations. It seems likely that analysts vary in regard to styles of management and modes of formulation not only one from another but from one kind of transference to another, from patient to patient, and even from time to time in the course of their lives. The usefulness of a definition of transference in terms of free association extended if the concept of countertransference is defined in comparable ways. In such a conception the determinants of the analyst's associations would form the basis of the definition.
