Paper Session C

17. Intersubjective Observations on Transference Love

Self Psychology Page | 21th Conference Program

The notion that the patient’s love of the analyst is a product of displacement and/or the repetition compulsion has fostered the "one person" view that the patient’s experience of the treatment relationship derives solely from the intrapsychic life of the patient. Intersubjectivity theory offers a very different conception of the nature of transference love and in the paper we hope to contribute further to this understanding.

Through the use of a case example, we will illustrate how the patient’s love for her therapist does not derive from her unconscious longings for a real or fantasied love object from childhood being displaced onto her therapist. Rather, it is a complex construction that developed in the intersubjective field created by the coming together of two subjectivities.

We will describe the selfobject and repetitive dimensions of the transference and will expand on the role of the antidote function of the transference. Selfobject and antidote dimensions of experience occur within an intersubjective field that engages the invariant organizing principles of both patient and therapist. We examine both the selfobject functions and the antidote functions of the experience of transference love, showing how both functions may operate in the same patient, with first one then the other being in the forefront of the transference experience.

Self Psychology Page | 21th Conference Program