Transference and the Faustian Imperative

Abstract

The key issue for Freud about the Anna O. case that continued to resonate with him for years after the publication of the Studies on Hysteria had very little to do with the subsequent fate of the patient, Bertha Pappenheim, and everything to do with how Breuer had dealt with the manifestations of his patient’s transference. The theoretical preconditions for the development of the concept of the transference in its specifically Freudian sense had been laid down by Freud in his theory of sexuality and defence, and the very last section of his contribution to the Studies on Hysteria is devoted to a discussion of the phenomenon. By comparison with what he was later to write on the subject it is quite an undeveloped outline of some of the problems of resistance caused when the patient transfers onto the person of the doctor distressing ideas that arise in the course of the analysis. At this point, the development of such a ‘false connection’² is seen by Freud as a difficulty that will arise in the course of every serious analysis, rather than as an essential mechanism of the treatment itself, but the examples he gives of this are all to do with the patient becoming over-dependent on or sexually attracted to the physician. He says that the way to deal with this is simply to draw attention to it and treat it as one more symptom that will dissolve with the end of the analysis. But right at the end of this section Freud adds a cautionary note about what may ensue if this is not properly confronted:

Was nicht originell ist, daran ist nichts gelegen, und was originell ist, trägt immer die Gebrechen des Individuums an sich.¹

J. W. von Goethe, Maximen und Reflexionen (Posth.)