Transference Of Love

Freud’s third paper on the technique of psychoanalysis deals with the issue of love in the analytic situation. The paper deals with the transference of love, its hindrance to recovery, how it needs to be dealt with, and eventually transformed and used towards the healing process. The occurrence of falling in love is explored from a practical and theoretical position.
When the client falls in deep love with the analyst, the analyst is faced with a specific set of challenges. Should he a) end treatment abruptly? b) Renounce all love with suppression? c) Or should the love be returned to the patient?
Freud challenges all three options, the option of termination, Freud dismisses by asking, and won’t love resurface with the new analyst as well? …show more content…
To answer what forcing the love into the treatment, Freud suggests, it’s the resistance towards recovery, the resistance forces the love-transference into the mix in order to prevent treatment from progressing, thus neurosis is pushed to the side and love takes center stage in order to hinder treatment. In regard to the origin of this love Freud clarifies, the analyst needs to be clear that this love is not real; it’s an erotic transference from early childhood. It is an early unconscious eroticism toward the parent that is being placed onto the analyst, because of the analytic situation, at a time when analysis is progressing. The analyst’s mission is to interpret to the patient that this love is not real; rather it’s a past love that is being played outin the moment in order to impede on the healing process. Thus the patient is able to process the love and work it through and return to the focus of treatment which is to renounce the neurosis without allowing the love to paralyze the treatment. Processing the love analytically, helps the patient understand the dynamics of their childhood psychical formulation and their defenses, thus change is brought about through the consciousness of the interpretation …show more content…
The patient, instead of remembering the past situation will act it out unconsciously in a compulsive way, by repeating the past repetitively instead of remembering it. The compulsion to repeat is actually an act of transference. The essence of transference is repeating the past unconsciously. The resistance and phobias of the past are also transferred and played out as a resistance in the present treatment, preventing the analysis from progressing. The acting out defends against the memorization, which means, the more acting out the less remembering can take place, and vice versa is also true, the more remembrance the less compulsive