Re-examining the Transference: Clinical and philosophical aspects
Saturday 20th October 2007
The second conference in eight days was this year's joint conference with THERIP (The Higher Education Research and Information network in Psychoanalysis) that was once again part of the project to create a video archive of interviews with eminent British psychoanalysts. The interviewee on this occasion was Edna O'Shaugnessy (of whom more later) and the overall theme of the day was 'Re-examining the transference'.
Bernard Burgoyne, a founder member of both THERIP and CFAR (The Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research) began proceedings with a richly detailed and erudite survey of the history of transference, as concept and reality in psychoanalysis. He identified three forms of transference: in dreams (displacements of affect from one element to another); language (new editions of old scripts, an idea taken from the Scottish philosopher Dougall Stewart on whose work Freud drew to construct his theory of aphasia); and transference in psychoanalytic practice (in which Freud sees it as a 'broken form of love'). Burgoyne showed now different theories of transference asserted themselves at different times and in different institutional settings, from Abraham (transference as projection), Ferenczi (introjection), Freud (transference as 'cliché' or stereotyped repetition), Ella Sharpe (transference as dramatization) and other attempts to understand the psychological past in the present. Bernard proposed that, for Freud, transference opens up a space in the analysis which allows the Oedipal drama to be displayed as 'the tragi-comedy of the human condition'. As if continuing this theme, Roger Kennedy, speaking next, addressed the question of 'happiness and misery' in his talk, drawing on Freud's 'romantic pessimism' in 'Civilization and its discontents'. Stepping back from today's culture of the 'quick fix' he looked at the history of ideas of happiness from the Greeks onward - its relation to 'chance' and 'fate', the 'gods' and 'temperament' - and their connection to psychoanalytic views. For Kennedy 'happiness' is not only an inner state but involves 'otherness' for its realization, pointing out that much psychoanalysis is trying to cope with the effects of an over-harsh superego. Kennedy's presentation certainly gave space for audience involvement and the discussion of his paper continued well into the lunch break.
The long session of the afternoon was devoted to the interview with Edna O'Shaughnessy conducted by David Bell, himself an eminent psychoanalyst and head of the adult department at the Tavistock Clinic. Edna O'Shaughnessy is one of the most distinguished analysts in Britain today, who has spent her professional life studying and developing the theoretical and clinical work of Melanie Klein. Born in South Africa in 1924 she first studied and taught philosophy, citing Wittgenstein's Tractatus as an early influence, before she 'discovered Freud' and began training at the Tavistock Clinic. John Bowlby was director at that time, Melanie Klein gave seminars, and Money Kyrle was one of her analysts. She spoke of the differences in technique between different schools of thought - whether you said too little or too much, according to one or other supervisor - but also the fundamental continuity of psychoanalysis as a process, predicated, as she has said elsewhere, on the conviction that 'psychic reality is a part of nature' and that 'the past is there with the present as the psychic reality of a patient starts to emerge in its individuality and interiority'. Towards the end of her interview she spoke movingly about post-apartheid South Africa, the extraordinary development of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and the inescapable fact that 'people are people through other people'.
Edna O'Shaughnessy had mentioned before the conference that she was keen to hear the last talk of the day by Luke Thurston, 'Pessoa: Poetics of the fragmented psyche' as she was a great fan of Pessoa's work. Pessoa was a writer who wrote under many different pseudonyms and 'personas' - a fact so unsettling that as I write this I am not sure if such a person really existed. Luke Thurston's paper charted some of the history and effects of this fragmentation and the questions it raises about truth and falsity, real and fake. He argued that Pessoa's fragmented, multiple personalities were not an eclipse of selfhood but rather a way of experiencing an affective awareness of self, citing one of Pessoa's 'autopsychographical' poems as evidence: 'The poet is a faker/ Who is so good at his act / He even fakes the pain/ Of pain he feels in fact". Pessoa's 'heteronyms' raise interesting questions for psychoanalysis and Thurston offered Klein's contention that transference may be enacted in relation to 'a wide range of internalized figures' as evidence of a notion of heteronymy at the heart of psychoanalysis itself. In discussion Edna O'Shaughnessy acknowledged the fact that analysis may touch only a fragment of the person on the couch.
This was a highly successful conference, much appreciated by those who attended, and thanks are due as usual to Audrey Cantlie and the THERIP committee. We look forward to the inauguration of the THERIP website and a chance to see again some of the video interviews which have been created for the archive.
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