Posted by allisonm on May 15, 2000, at 22:08:44
In reply to Transference for Alan, posted by allisonm on May 15, 2000, at 17:46:06
OK. I fixed most of the typos and added the reading list at the bottom....
From "A Guided Tour of The Collected Works of C.G. Jung" by Robert Hopcke:
Transference/Countertransference
Jung's idea of transference within the analytic relationship was similar to Freud's, with several important differences based on Jung's ideas about the psyche. While Jung agreed with Freud that the phenomenon of transference consisted of thoughts, feelings, and fantasies from another relationship, usually in the past, being reexperienced within a present relationship, Jung differed from Freud in seeing that a transferencce may not be based solely on material from the personal unconscious but may contain striking archetypal elements as well. One may have a father transference to an analyst that goes beyond anything the patient ever experienced with his or her own father, experiencing the analyst as a larger-than-life, perhaps even mythically idealized figure, an experience most appropriately called an archetypal transference.Though both Freud and Jung shared the view that transference was an ever present element of every relationship, Freud viewed transference and its analytic counterpart, countertransference, as a largely pathological occurrence between people -- inappropriate, irrational, lacking reality orientation. For this reason, Freud saw transference within the analytic relationship as a matter for constant, focused exploration between analyst and patient until, ideally, the whole of the transference had been made conscious, worked through, and ultimately resolved.
Jung, however, viewing the psyche as a naturally occurring phenomenon, removed transference/countertransference fom the realm of psychopathology, seeing it as a natural occurence, perhaps unavoidable and at times even helpful. For these reasons, he differed sharply with psychoanalysis, holding the view that the real relationship between analyst and patient was potentially much more curative than the transference relationship and that the lack of transference was actually a positive factor in the analytic relationship. Further, Jung saw the transference of personal or archetypal material onto the person of the analyst as something to be understood but not necessarily resolved. Within Jungian analysis, therefore, the transference and countertransference relationship is often asknowledged and explored without becoming the sole focus of treatment. Indeed, as one can see in light of Jung's theory of the collective unconscious, resolution of the transference would mean making conscious the vast ocean of collective human experience -- a manifest impossibility. Jung worked to make conscious the wholeness that the unconscious transference/countertransference relationship represents, thereby hoping to bring into awareness the deep levels of existence that the patient experiences and reexperiences within the analytic relationship.
To explicate his transformational view of the transference/countertransference relationship within analysis, Jung used the symbolism of the alchemical process, a precess of changing base metals into gold which he alchemists of the Middle Ages believed to be literally possible but which Jung saw as a projection of an inner, psychic process onto external, material reality. The point of the analytic process, for Jung, was to change the base metals of unexamined, projected experience into the gold of a more unified, personally integrated experience, not simply to resolve the transference on the level of the personal unconscious. Jung's definitive and highly influential study of alchemical symbolism as it pertains to transference within analysis, "The Psychology of the Transference," in its pictorial and symbolic richness could not be more unlike typically Freudian psychoanalytic treatments of the topic.
Among Jungian analysts, a wide range of opinion exists on the place of transference/countertransference in analysis. Some analysts make transference analysis the centerpiece of analytic work, particularly the so-called London School of Jungian analysts following Michael Fordham's lead, while others follow Jung's own opinions more closely and relativize the place of transference analysis in psychotherapy. The secondary sources in the readings list (below) show the variation in how transference is conceived of and handled therapeutically by contemporary analysts.
The readings lists begins with Jung's ideas on transference during his period of association with Freudian psychoanalysis, followed by an article that gives Jung's more typical view of transference. Jung's most important work, "The Psychology of the transference," is suggested under "To Go Deeper," since the reader may wish to become more acquainted with Jung's psychological studies of alchemy before delving into this unusual piece of Jung's writing.
To Begin
"Some Crucial points in Psychoanalysis," cw4,pp.252-289
"The Theory of Psychoanalysis," cw 4, esp. chap. 8, "Therapeutic Principles of Psychoanalysis," pp. 181-203
"The problems of modern Psychotherapy," cw 16, pp. 53-75To Go Deeper:
"The Psychology of the Transference," cw 16, pp. 164-323
Secondary sources:
Fordham, Michael. "Jungian Psychotherapy." New York: Wiley, 1978Jacoby, Mario. "The Analytic Encounter: Transference and Human Relationship." Toronto: Inner City Books, 1984
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