Transference: erotised, erotic, loving, affectionate

Within a set of phenomena traditionally problematic for psychoanalysis, four types of erotic transference are outlined with a description of their dynamic genesis and related case histories (transference and countertransference developments, fundamental treatment procedures): erotised, erotic, loving, and affectionate transference. The first type is based mostly on psychotic modalities, the second on neurotic modalities. Both the loving and the affectionate transference, on the other hand, turn out to be clinical forms corresponding to a normal substantially same development, different from each other by virtue of a diverse level of maturation in the Oedipus complex: they often provoke--in analysts--a defensive stiffening which is harmful and--from the theoretical point of view--not above reproach. The work is particularly focused on the analytic evolution of a female patient who develops an amorous transference in which the defensive aspects prove to be less important than the potentially evolutionary ones. The treatment has been based--in particular--on the analytic utilisation of this transference. The last part of the contribution is devoted to the analysts' 'guarantee factors', which permit them to work in psychoanalysis with the 'highly explosive forces' of these transference configurations, maintaining a useful, rigorous, sensitive and sufficiently creative framework.