Analysis of transference: a North American perspective

Using detailed clinical vignettes, the author illustrates and compares several North American approaches to the analysis of transference, tracing their origins in Freud's works and in various post-Freudian conceptualizations, including the writings of Anna Freud and Charles Brenner. Particular attention is paid to the work of Merton Gill, Evelyne Schwaber, Paul Gray, and the British analyst, Betty Joseph. Discussed and illustrated are controversies over the broader and narrower views of transference, the interpretation of action in the analytic setting, earlier and later interpretations of transference with particular emphasis on the contrast between contemporary Kleinian and ego psychological perspectives, the role of extra-transference interpretation, and the concept of the transference neurosis. An argument is made for an integrative approach, drawing upon different emphases, depending on the clinical circumstances and the point of affective immediacy for the patient, which may or may not coincide with the point of affective immediacy for the analyst.