PAGE 7

If we examine Freud’s statement more closely, we are struck by many difficulties. First, what is meant by ‘admissible to consciousness’? In 1912, it implied that this transference component was part of the system PcsCs. Since during this period interpretation consisted in essence of making conscious that which had been unconscious, it would in any case have been irrelevant, if not conceptually impossible, to do more than is depicted by the patient’s attention (hyper-cathexis) to it, but there could be no question of unconscious elements playing an important role.


With patients to whom of many derivatives of oedipal fantasies, may be largely within awareness. Nonerotic or de-erotised admiration and affection may be conscious from the first, and their role in the analytic process may be quite clear. What is generally obscure is the role of this positive, overtly Nonerotic transference in maintaining a powerful resistance, not only to the resolution of inhibitions, but also to the analytic exploration of hidden springs of defiance and revenge. What looks accessible to consciousness may be so only in part: What seems free of suppressed erotic impulses may be not so in fact, and what seemed altogether unobjectionable may after a time constitutes the most difficult aspect of the transference neurosis. What appears on the surface to be so very positive may also be the screen for stubborn aggressive elements, in that respect a persistent obstacle to analytic resolution.

To return to Freud’s 1912 formulation, we need to be reminded that he never regarded consciousness as a simple matter, but always conceived of it as fluid and uncertain of definition. This is evident in The Interpretation of Dreams and is elaborated in his brilliant little paper, A Note upon the Mystic Writing-Pad (1925) in which he presents a view of consciousness as not simply a passive receptor, but bring dependent on an active function: This agrees with a notion that has long since been at work the method by which the perceptual apparatus of our mind functions, which I have as yet kept to myself.

Its theory is that cathectic innervations are sent out, withdrawn in rapid peridotic impulses from within into the completely pervious system Pcpty.-Cs. If that system is cathected in this manner, it receives perceptions (which are accompanied by consciousness) and passes the excitation onto the unconscious anemic system, but as soon. As the cathexis is withdrawn, consciousness is extinguished. The functioning. Of the system comes to a standstill. It is as though the unconscious stretches. Out feelers, through the medium of the system Pcpty.-Cs. Toward the external world and hastily withdraws them when they have sampled the excitations coming from it.

Freud might have been describing a kind of psychic radar, an ingenious device by which the mind tests external reality. In any casse, a careful reading of his work from the Project (1895) to the New Introductory Lectures (1933) gives no comfort to those who would see a simple definition of what was meant by ‘admissible to consciousness’. How accessible, how fleeting, under what conditions, are all open questions, the answer to which are not determined in any simple way.

By 1937, when Freud published, Analysis Terminable and Interminable, it was evident of how much of his views had developed. He no longer insisted on the existence of a relatively simple Nonerotic or de-erotised conscious positive transference that required no analysis. Now, with some regret, he emphasized the presence of conflictual elements that were inaccessible to analysis not because they were conscious and ‘unobjectionable’, but because they were latent or inactive during the treatment. They could, in fact, be very objectionable indeed. Not the least of these conflicts were those centred on the transference that, unanalyzed, could so often predispose to future difficulties.

These latent conflicts, he decided, could not be brought into the analysis by the analyst, either by verbal intrusions or by active manipulation, manoeuvres he regarded as both ineffective and potentially damaging. Yet in the same paper he stated what is a contradiction, in his disavowal of the principle of ‘letting sleeping dogs lie’. He went further: ‘Analytic experience has taught us that the better is always the enemy of good and that in every phase of the patient’s recovery we fight against his inertia, which is ready to be content with an incomplete solution’ (Freud, 1937).

Defining it precisely what would justify that we are to regarding a conflict as an inactive or latent and therefore inaccessible to analysis is difficult. Undoubtedly, some conflicts are so heavily defended from analysis that as good as we suspect their presence, but we are baffled to uncover them, much less to analyse them. We may become aware of them only when the patient returns to us for further help or when he enters analysis with a colleague and lets us know of his decision. Achieving some comfort by convincing ourselves that condition had not been propitious is possible, for example, that the patient was a candidate in training, was caught in a difficult marriage or in another situation that favoured stubborn resistances. No doubt this is often the case - still, was that the only reason? Could we and should we have done more?

The analyst, by his very presence and his willingness to listen, sets up a relationship described by Bird (1972) as ‘false’ transference', to become in effect ‘the worst enemy of the transference’. To some analysts are agreeable with this assessment of the complications inherent in this necessary, early development of the analytic situation, however, the inclining inclination of being ‘false’ is regarded as controversial, it is often manifested before the first visit, sometimes even in transparent dreams, and as such it reflects the wishes and fantasies of the patient rather than that his recognition of the reality of the situation.

Questioning ourselves would be wise, therefore, as to the nature of this response, to ask which conflicts are being expressed and concealed by it, and to what extent it is dependent on the reality of the analytic situation, the patient’s conviction that the person he consults is benign, wise, and helpful is, we hope, justified by the reality. Yet we know well enough that a patient may experience extreme distrust of an analyst who is in fact perfectly trustworthy, and conversely he may place his implicit confidence in one who deserves it not at all. The personal success of so many charlatans in the mental health field is evidence enough.

This positive response to the analyst corresponds in part at least to Freud’s unobjectionable component, and in its more developed phases it may be called the working alliance. Yet though it is necessary and useful for initiating and maintaining the analysis, we are hardly justified in concluding that it is altogether accessible to consciousness, nor that it is by its unobjectable nature. In fact, it carried a particular heavy load of unconscious conflict, much of which has to be repressed in order for the treatment to begin, and its long-term effects often highly objectionable. Eventually, therefore, we need to understand this phenomenon as thoroughly as any other we encounter in analysis. If we accept that eventually it must be interpreted, we accept also that we must study it in detail. But, nonetheless how?

Listening carefully to a patient’s first impressions of us is instructive. They may consist of apparently diverse observations about the furniture of the office, of personal idiosyncrasies, and the like. Just when there is a neglect of such matters as whether or not we are relaxed and confident, youthful or aged in appearance and manner, and other factors we regard as far more significant.

This is not to say that these latter details are not perceived and stored in memory, quite the contrary. However, they are often repressed and subject to distortion, to appear later in the analysis in various forms. Often the patient will question, for example, whether I wear glasses, although he has seen me a hundred times or more, never without them, or he will be wildly wrong in estimating my age, or astonishing becoming aware of a picture that has been facing the couch for years. Such familiar phenomena may, with some effort, be understood and analysed: It is to be believed that they contain the clues that can help us solve the mystery of the unobjectionable element.

The patient’s reaction to and impressions of the analyst are built up of many determinants. They are first and most profoundly the needs and desires he brings to the analysis, the unconscious wishes that seek to be gratified. Superimpose on these are his early impressions of the analyst, derived from a host of perceptions, for example, the mode of referral, the initial telephone call, early impressions of appearance and manner, discussions of indications and conditions for the analysis, including hours and fees. An entry in a new world, it often takes on aan overwhelming quality - far too much to be dealt within a few sessions. Inevitably its effects are manifested throughout even a very long analysis, often in forms that make their sources difficult to detect. Yet before us, is the material of much of the transference, especially of the unobjectionable component.

This aspect is not so willingly scrutinized with the same intensity with which we approach other phenomena. The reasons are, upon examination, not so obscure. For one thing, the trusting, positive attitude of the analysand does allow the analysis to continue, and it is comfortable for the two parties - unless the analyst forces himself to put aside that comfort. Secondly, it seems free of conflict. Third, it seems to make sense, to be entirely rational, that one person should admire and trust another who is so worthy of it. Finally, we are influenced by the dictum that we analyse the transference only when it serves the resistance, advice that would be easy to follow if we could always be sure when that took place. Suspicions are that without much difficulty prescience is a very rare gift. If we resist the temptation to take the positive transference for granted, therefore, we must find some way of analysing a component that on the surface looks unanalyzable.

In 1955 Lewin wrote Dream Psychology and the Analytic Situation, a work that has been insufficiently recognized for its theoretical and technical importance. It described the analyst as fulfilling a double role, first as one who encourages the patient to allow himself to regress, to suspend criticism, to associate freely, to put himself into his past, to allow himself to feel helpless and to restrain his impulses toward physical change of position, although not to oral communication. Lewis pointed out the analogy with hypnosis, with the analyst as inducer of quasi-sleep and dreaming states, in which the wish to analyse is substituted for the wish to sleep.

The encouragement of regression is fundamental to the analytic process, but it is hardly the analyst only function, a fact that may be ignored in many therapeutic innovations. The analyst must also become the one who rouses the ‘dreaming patient’, who interprets, who encourages and guides the process of self-observation. By this token, he is the one who awakens, who insists on the substitution of secondary for primary process. Of higher ego functions for more archaic ones. Inevitably he becomes the transference representative of that agency most often responsibly for insomnia, the conscience.

Perhaps, its venture that the loving, conscious, unobjectionable part of the transference is directed toward the analyst as the one who soothes, who induces sleep and allows the patient to feel less frightened, for he is ‘safe’, but not for a long time can this love be directed toward the one who accomplishers the awakening. Conducting a long treatment is possible, of course, while maintaining one’s role as the inducer of sleep and dreams, to accomplish a good deal in the way of symptom relief, and thus be rewarded by expressions of gratitude. Whether, without fulfilling one’s role as awakener, one may be rewarded by having accomplished effective analysis is another matter.

To employ Lewin’s striking metaphor, it might be taken care of, in that we mindfully experiment in treating the patient’s demands on the analyst as if these were derivative of unconscious wishes expressed in a dream, and that we consider the various perceptions stored and used from time to time as if they were the memories and day residues employed by the dream work. By this device we may treat the patient’s overtly expressed altitudes as if they corresponded to a manifest dream. We make the assumptions that there are unconscious wishes that seek gratification, that such wishes are subject to conflict and must attain expression in disguised forms. To achieve expression, memory traces of percept, including a day residue, are used both to afford a vehicle for the wish fulfilment and to disguise, as far as necessary, their true purpose. Thus, these wishes are allowed to reach consciousness in some form in spite of disapproval by other agencies, e.g., by evading the (preconscious) censorship according to the model described in The Interpretation of Dreams (Freud, 1900), or the (larger unconscious) repressive functions of the ego and superego according to the later structure model.

The patient’s wishes and fantasies may be worked over further, brought into more rational, logical, organized form by a process analogous to secondary revisions: In the topographic model this depends on the preconscious system, in the structural model it would be considered a manifestation of the synthetic function of the ego. The description of secondary revision, described by Freud in 1900, may be regarded as one of the earliest precursors of the structural model of the ego.

To pursue further the analogies between this aspect of transference and secondary revision of dreams let us look upon the Freudian say-so, atop which Freud wrote, ‘because of its efforts, the dream loses its appearance of absurdity and disconnectedness and approximates to the model of an intelligible experience. The connection of secondary revision with daydreams may also be extended to transferences, how much of the patient’s attitudes is based on fantasies of what the ideal patient-analyst relationship should be? A respectful, finial attitude, an eager pupil-teacher re-enactment, an innocent liaison with no threat os consummation? These are so appropriate, so sensible, so truly helpful to the analysis that we tend to forget how much of the wild aspects of this analysis are thus ‘moulded’ into a kind of daydream.

In what is admittedly a highly simplified fashion, we might consider the case of these patients who treat their analysts as if they were kindly, intelligent, benign, and in a good manner, trained and disciplined, rightly interested and even fond of them, but not a danger in any erotic sense. It seems of reasonable enough description of the actual situation if one does not examine its unconscious components.

Rather than taking this at face value as an intelligent patient’s evaluation of the reality of the analytic situation, accepting gratefully a fine working alliance or an unobjectionable component, if instead we insist upon the arduous and possibly disagreeable task of analysing beliefs and attitudes, we find something very different, far more conflicted, complex, and not altogether benign. The patient has been a model analysand, working hard, associating well, bringing gifts of associations and dreams. For example, she may be charming without being erotically seductive, and faithful to the point of causing concern for both of us. It may be entirely rational, justified by the reality of the situation. It is, of course, much too good to be true, for it is not accompanied by progress in the most urgent therapeutic goals, for example, that of achieving a gratifying sexual life and an ultimately satisfying career. There are also likely to be curious distortions and self-deceptions displayed, for example, when a patient talks of herself as obnoxious and without friends, statements that are manifestly false whatever their unconscious truth. Young women’s patients particularly complain of the usual distortions of a body image so common in them, to being fat and ugly, all of which being quite aware of the contrary. They may be fishing for compliments, but that is not all. These analyses, smooth as they are most of the time, do not altogether result in untroubled ‘sleep’. Sometimes without understanding why, patients become frightened, agitated, and depressed, as if repressed impulses had broken through, like a bad dream.

We might now try the experiment of treating this material as if it were a manifest dream, consisting of a childlike, innocent, and highly educational liaison under the name of analysis. The underlying wishes that have emerged contain erotic fantasies about the parents, combined usually with violent impulses to destroy them both. Behind the befittingly-behaved and rational person may be the image of a lustful, destroying angel, who would kill without mercy in a kind of oedipal rage. To allow these wishes to achieve any kind of expression, they must be made more acceptable for the patient by allowing her to assume such desires without a penalty whose weakness is such that she need not fear of destroying the beloved parents. Or they may be expressed more openly by an ironic stance, which allows them to be proclaimed, and to be disowned.


These memory traces may again be compared to how they are dealt within the dream work. The patient may recall; being a great favourite of many older people and always having a teacher’s pet at school, always loved: These generally seem accurate. They often recall at least one and perhaps more screen memories that include some early sexual experience’s h a parent, fantasies that may have been related to horseplay with siblings and even to a greater extent to medical procedures later in childhood. Most of the childhood memories reported in the analysis are generally quite plausible and subject to relatively little obvious distortion, except the inevitable effects of the passage of time. There is little of the bizarre and strange about them, reflecting both the powerful reality sense of these patients and the highly organized structure of their intelligent and well-disciplined families.

Whatever is observed in the analytic environment, the patient uses as a day residue, as material to carry fantasies. Yet the whole is likely to be so sensible, so rationalized, so free of manifest erotic or violent elements, that we must assume that a powerful synthesized ego function is at work, like a very effective secondary revision of an otherwise bizarre and disturbing dream, with few breakthroughs of incongruous ideation and affect.

This process, again by analogy, "protects sleep." That is, it helps the ego to maintain a comfortable regressive state of affairs in analysis, in which the patient is apparently a sensible, conscious, and sophisticated adult and an erotically excited, vengeful child. To ‘awaken’ her, that is, to interpret, would be to lead her to recognize her unconscious wishes for what they are, to help her deal with her repressive and ironic defences that have allowed the neurosis to continue and the analysis to go on without much real impact on the most important problem. To continue in a sleep-like state, on the other hand, permits her to act both roles and to continue to play out the surprising contradictions in her personality.

If we suppose that interpretation ‘removes’ the transference, as Freud suggested in 1912, we should be hesitant to bring it to consciousness before it has produced a resistance - assuming we are so prescient as to be able to detect the moment at which that latter event occurs. Still, we are not sure any more that transference is so easily ‘removed’ by interpretation. It seems certain that Freud no longer believed this when he wrote Analysis Terminable and Interminable.

How and when to interpret phenomena such as these make up a really reasonable dilemma. Kohut (1971), for example, approaching his patients with a theory that emphasizes a developmental view and puts’ aside conflictual considerations, would ‘accept’, possibly for a long period, even the most highly idealized expressions of admiration for himself. He warns against ‘premature interpretation’ of such positive expressions, especially in the cases he classifies as narcissistic character disorders.

Many years earlier, Phyllis Greenacre (1954), employing a different point of view, cautioned against early transference interpretations with narcissistic patients who are prone to acting out, since such interventions might result in at least temporary impairments of certain defensive controls and result in episodes of destructive behaviour. She made it clear that she was discussing a limited group of patients and her remarks were not confined to the ‘unobjectionable’ component. She was very much concerned with the development of a fix in a firm manner of over-idealizing attitudes toward the analyst and the problems engendered by these.

Without question interpreting the patient’s good-nature appears rarely advisable, cooperative attitude during the early part of analysis. Being inadvisable is not merely likely: It is worse than that, because during the first few weeks or months we could not possibly understand the unconscious components of this phenomenon. Early interpretations may remarkably be possible in a quickening notation that may prove sufficiently used for a vivid notable in characterizing its mark of notoriety, out of luck or intuition, but during the phase when we hardly know the patient venturing definite statements of meaning would be foolhardier.

We need not interpret early, therefore, and could not if we would. Nevertheless, there is a vast difference in accepting a phenomenon as reality-based, conflict-free, representing only itself, and, on the other hand, treating it more properly as a surface manifestation of a complex set of opposing forces, most of which operate outside conscious awareness, which require explanation eventually in analysis.

The questions we encounter are like those addressed to a particularly good manner of defending its dream, in that, taken on a superficially reasonable form. A good example would be Freud’s Dream of the Botanical Monograph. Repeating is brief enough: "I had written a monograph ion a certain plant. The book lay before me and I was just over a folded coloured plate. Bound up in each copy there was a dried specimen of the plant, as though it had been taken from a herbarium" (1900). Jumping to the conclusion would have been easy, by no incorrect means, that the dream expressed the wish that the yet incomplete monograph intended to make his reputation was already published and on display. How reasonable and easy to understand. Freud was, fortunately, not so easily satisfied. He discovered, in his analysis of the dream. References to matters ranging from his experiments with cocaine back to infantile sexual investigations, to which he understandably only eluded.