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Affect revisited: Transference–countertransference and the unconscious dimensions of affective, felt and emotional experience

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Abstract

This paper explores the concept of transference–countertransference arguing that it holds out the promise of an inherently relational understanding of the unconscious dimensions of affective, felt and emotional experience. This argument is contrasted to Ian Burkitt's multi-dimensional model of affect, feeling and emotion which rejects the notion that these have unconscious dimensions understood in psychoanalytic terms. The paper suggests that there may be more grounds for dialogue between these approaches than those that meet the eye and that, as such, transference–countertransference may be a useful resource in the current putative ‘affective turn.’

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Notes

  1. Brennan suggests that, although clinical accounts of transference–countertransference contain a relational model of affect and feeling, this is contradicted by the psychoanalytic concept of the subject. The latter is, for Brennan, a self-contained ‘bounded’ individual. This argument is, I would argue, difficult to sustain in the light of the relational and object relations literature. See, for instance, Bollas (1993).

  2. Transference is not seen as a purely defensive or negative phenomenon. As Nancy Chodorow (1999, pp. 22–23) has argued, it is via transference and projective identification that the external world is brought subjectively to life.

  3. Ogden stresses that, in analysis, it is the patient's transference that is the object of reflection. The analyst may privately reflect on his contribution to the transference but with the aim of understanding what this tells him about the patient.

  4. It has been pointed out to me that at least elements of this argument – particularly the emphasis on repetition's location in the present – exist in Freud's own discussion of these issues (see, for instance, Freud, 1914, 1958, p. 151).

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Acknowledgements

This paper is indebted to discussions with Wendy Hollway and other Open University colleagues in the Psycho-Social Reading Group. Thanks also to Simon Forrest, Ann Phoenix and Deborah Steinberg and, for advice on an individual point, to Lynne Layton. Finally, my thanks to Lisa Blackman and two anonymous reviewers for exemplary critical responses to earlier drafts.

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Redman, P. Affect revisited: Transference–countertransference and the unconscious dimensions of affective, felt and emotional experience. Subjectivity 26, 51–68 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1057/sub.2008.34

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