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partly tries to escape from his Oedipus situation. In the case of my little criminal the breaking open of cupboards and attacks on little girls were substituted for attacks on his mother.

These views naturally require to be further examined and worked out. In my opinion everything seems to point to the conclusion that it is not the lack of a super-ego but a different development of the super-ego-probably the fixation of the super-ego at a very early stage— which will prove to be the main factor.

If these suppositions prove true, practical prospects of great importance are opened out. If it is not a deficiency in the super-ego and the conscience but a different development of it which causes a criminal development, analysis should be able to remove the latter as well as it removes neuroses. Just as with perversions and with psychoses, it may be impossible to find ways of approaching adult criminals. But as regards analyses in childhood the position is different. A child does not need special motives for analysis; it is a question of technical measures to establish the transference and to keep the analysis going. I do not believe in the existence of a child in whom it is impossible to obtain this transference, or in whom the capacity for love cannot be brought out. In the case of my little criminal, he was apparently utterly devoid of any capacity for love, but analysis proved that this was not so. He had a good transference to me, good enough to make analysis possible, although he had no motives for it, since he even did not show any special aversion against being sent to the reformatory. Moreover, analysis showed that this dull boy had a deep and sincere love for his mother. The mother died in terrible circumstances from cancer, which in the last stage of her illness led to complete decay. The daughter did not like to go near her, and it was he who looked after her. As she lay dead, the family was removed; he could not be found for some time, he had locked himself up with his dead mother in the room.

It may be objected that in childhood the tendencies are not yet clearly defined, so that we may often be unable to recognize when a child is on the way to becoming a criminal. This is undoubtedly true, but precisely this statement leads me to my concluding remarks. It is undoubtedly not easy to know to what results the tendencies of a child. will lead, whether to the normal, the neurotic, the psychotic, the pervert, or the criminal. But precisely because we do not know we must seek to know. Psycho-analysis gives us this means. And it does more; it can not only ascertain the future development of the child, but it can also change it, and direct it into better channels.

THE PROBLEM OF THE TRANSFERENCE1

BY TRIGANT BURROW.

FOR Some time I have wanted to discuss the problem of the transference. My reason for wishing to do so is not only that I regard the phenomenon of transference as the major problem in psychopathology but that I do not think that throughout the field of psychopathology there exists any other problem except the transference phenomenon. In a word, it is my view that the neurosis and the transference are one.

This position calls for explanation. It calls for it the more because a right account of this wider acceptation of the transference affords also a right account of the essential basis of group analysis-a basis upon my entire position in psychoanalysis rests2.

which

As technically described, the transference is the unconscious response with which the neurotic patient reacts toward persons of his environment and specifically toward the personality of the psychoanalyst. This response (attraction or repulsion) represents a replacement for early affectional memories, most particularly for the early impressions that cluster about the parent. Once a relationship of close confidence is established toward his physician, these early impressions surge back to the patient and automatically fixate his emotional interest upon the analyst. But, under conditions of group analysis, one finds this description far too narrow for the scope of the phenomena embraced under it. One can only attribute so restricted a definition to the limited tendency of interpretation to which one is necessarily confined upon an individualistic basis of analysis. As the presumable therapeutic efficacy of the transference and its axiomatic conditioning of the analysis grow precisely out of this restricted conception of it, it is the more urgent that we expand our outlooks and define more broadly the phenomenon of the transference.

In the first place I cannot any longer regard the transference as a specific phenomenon. I cannot feel that it is a process which has been

1

Paper

read before the third annual mid-year meeting of the American Psychoanalytic

Association, New York City, December 26, 1926.

"The Group Method of Analysis," to be published in a forthcoming issue of The Psychoanalytic Review.

given clear scientific definition or that it has as yet received a definitive analytic handling from us. As far as I can see, the transference is by no means a phenomenon that distinguishes the state of mind of a particular patient sitting in front of me but is a condition of the social mind generally. Upon analysis this state of mind proves to be, in essence, an unconscious condition of dependence on the part of each individual toward every other, and it invariably shows itself in an unconscious attitude that alternates constantly between favour or placation on the one hand and irritation or complaint on the other. In a mood of placation, for example, our contentment is but a reflection of the 'niceness' of those about us. In a mood of irritation we demand that others shall so acquit themselves as to appease our displeasure. Such a quite normal and every-day attitude is nothing else than the transference, or a dependence upon another individual for one's own state of mind. This mood-dependence existing socially and shifting constantly between love and hate, happiness and pain, is, I maintain, operative at all times and is as completely automatic and unconscious as the unconscious mood. we habitually observe in the individual patient.

This process of the transference can best be studied if we will observe it as it first arises in early childhood. As we all know, the social attitude of mind surrounding the child is such that there is straightway placed a premium upon an attitude of behaviour in him that is called 'good.’ This moralistic attitude, however, invariably rests upon a referred affect. For this social attitude of mind that stands opposite the child summons the mind of the child over to itself, as it were, and bids him regard himself from a position opposite to him. From this dissociative position the child is counselled to see to it that his conduct conforms to a socially standardized pattern designated as right or commendable. This mechanism whereby the mind of the child is placed in a position of criticism opposite himself induces in the organism of the individual a dualistic or disparate basis of action. Under the influence of this dissociative social mood the individual is led to identify himself with a criterion that is opposite and outside of himself and henceforward he is bidden to measure his every action in the social mirror in which his action is thus reflected. In this way the individual's every mood is bound up in a social image that is based upon a referred affect1.

This social image and its original psychogenic incitement is interesting in relation to the mood alternation we find represented in the

1 "Social Images versus Reality." Journ. of Abnormal Psychology and Social Psychology, XIX, no. 3, October-December 1924.

two poles of the transference-complacence or complaint, pleasure or pain, love or hate. For this referred or dependent mood is, according to the finding of the group analysis, directly traceable to the early inducement in the child of this social image of himself as inculcated by the parent. This dualistic condition by which the child measures his best interest according as his image is reflected by others is called the knowledge of good and bad. It is called the early training of the child. It is, in fact, a completely unconscious inducement in the child of a transference or image-relationship based upon dependence upon others and is the reflection of an equally unconscious attitude of transference or dependence on the part of others with respect to him. This imagerelationship, with its referred affect, establishes a purely adventitious connection between the parent and the child, between the world of image and the world of function. It sets before the child an artificial basis of comparison or contrast between himself and his social environment. In so doing, it places a bar to the natural unity or physiological mood through which the individual is organically continuous with others. For, through the transference existing in the social milieu surrounding the child, he early imbibes this social transference-basis also. In this way there is artificially induced in him a secondary and disparate mood which replaces the spontaneous relationship comprising the natural function between the parent- and child-organisms, or between the individual and the social world about him. Such is the essential cleavage or division concomitant with the social induction in the mind of the child of his own image or self-reflection. Such is the embryonic origin of the phenomenon of transference.

As this social image is phyletic in its source, its distribution is phyletic. As it is general in its origin, it is general in its development also. It is our observation, therefore, that the transference represents a state of universal unconsciousness, that it is the meaning not only of our private basis of social interchange but that it is the basis as well of all our social institutions. This social transference dominates our courts, our clinics and our academies. The home and the school are completely subjugated to this social image. Upon an analysis of man's religious impulse we find it to have no other motive than the spurious promise of self-interest or favour represented in the phenomenon of transference. The fluctuating policies of government are traceable directly to the unconscious vacillations of this referred affect. Upon the insecurity of this unconscious transference rests the whole fabric of marriage as upon it rest the relationships of whole nations to one another. In brief,

through the unconscious reciprocity of this social image, it is the underlying mood of all our human relationships1. If I like or dislike, if I am confident or dismayed, it is transference. If my feeling is one of interest or boredom, if it is one of satisfaction or chagrin, it is transference. Whether I am irritated with a taxi-driver or whether in my benevolence I bestow charities upon the indigent, my mood is still one of transference. If I am a patriot or an anarchist, a socialist or an imperialist, believer or disbeliever, it is again transference. And if, in my dissatisfaction at finding my own image pursuing me at all times under this social obsession of transference, I turn to others with question and complaint, it is once more transference. It is the attitude of dependence, it is the referred affect, it is the mother-image as it is reflected in the social image of one's self.

Due to this mood of dependence and its unconscious alternative of propitiation or redress-love or hate the individual is constantly under the necessity to seek the cover of psychological concepts that are merely substitutive. Our philosophies, our ethics, our religious and educational formulations teem throughout with secondary social images that merely reflect this mood of transference or dependence. Nowhere is the individual's expression dependable in his relation to others because of this disparate mood that is incited at the very origin of his social relationships. In this situation, according to our group studies in analysis, our psychological concepts and intellectualizations represent replacements for the functional interrelationships natural to the individuals of the species. Accordingly, through the repression of the primary physiological mood man, there is substituted in each individual an unconsciously projected defence-affect or transference for which the function of analysis can only be its reabsorption and elimination by the individual organism2.

of

At the last meeting of the American Psychoanalytic Association many questions were asked me regarding the principles and practice underlying the group method of analysis. There could be no doubt as to the sincerity and earnestness of the questions asked and I cannot but believe that the effort of response on my part was felt to be equally sincere. Nevertheless, the meeting, as a whole, failed to reach a common understanding. The positions held in our respective interpretations remained the same at the end as at the beginning of the inquiry. Such

1 "Our Mass Neurosis." The Psychological Bulletin, xxIII, no. 6, June 1926. "Insanity a Social Problem." The American Journal of Sociology, XXXII, no. 1, part 1, July 1926.

2 "The Reabsorbed Affect and Its Elimination." British Journ. of Medical Psychology, VI, part III.

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