ABSTRACT
The psychoanalytical approach to behaviour finds an ideal field in the study of transference; has not Freud himself postulated that in transference the patient substitutes repetition by behaviour for remembering by thought and language? Transference is the result both of resistance that replaces remembering by repetition in acting out, and of the dynamic unconscious—that is, of frustrated and repressed tendencies that are 'ready for transference'. Classically positive and negative transference has been defined in terms of friendly or hostile feelings; the insufficiencies of this position have been resolved by postulating that transference is most often ambivalent. According to current definitions the emotion experienced by the patient in relation to the analyst reveals the positive or negative character of transference. The classical conception has been summarized in the Freudian allegory of the mirror-analyst; transference is a spontaneous phenomenon attributable to the patient and explained in intra-individual terms.
