Correspondences and thought-transference during psychoanalysis

Correspondences, when the analyst has not verbalized his disturbed thoughts and they appear in the patient's spoken associations during analytic treatment, are not due to a single cause. Rather, they occur under a variety of circumstances: chance, coincidence, communication through sensory stimuli and perceptions, sometimes of extraordinary subtlety; or possibly thought-transference. Even if the latter possibility were doubted, the correspondence still may have usefulness as a finding of significance for the treatment process itself. It may alert the analyst to repressive forces directed toward the mix of his disturbing thoughts (reality derived), residues of old conflict areas that these have activated, even if transiently, and also to the current state of his countertransference. Utilizing the patient's associations will increase the analyst's awareness and facilitate the latter's quickly working through of these elements. This will favor progress of treatment. As for the question of thought-transference, preliminary findings suggest that the conditions under which it seems to occur involve the simultaneity of (1) the analyst's tendency to repress disturbing thoughts (including activated infantile residuals) because of guilt at being distracted and (2) qualitatively similar conflictual themes emerging from repression in the patient's unconscious. It raises the question as to whether extrasensory communication is between the unconscious of the two persons involved, occurring at a time when two opposite forces--repression in the analyst and modification of repression of qualitatively similar idea-complexes in the patient--are operative. The subject of correspondences and thought-transference in psychoanalytic treatment requires further study.