Transference: "an original creation"

While the psychoanalytic process explores the past, it does so within the context of the immediacy of the present. A clinical vignette is used to demonstrate the distinction between unconscious fantasies which, though buried, are alive in the present, and the historical past which shaped those fantasies. On that basis, interpretations and reconstructions are distinguished. The tension between singular process and dyadic interaction is also considered in the light of the centrality of present experience. Finally, the place of current sensation in connection to memory is addressed.