Negative

Contemporary psychoanalytic theory generally uses the term negative in its adjectival form ("negative transference," "negative therapeutic reaction"). Here it is conceptually treated as a substantive. The "work of the negative" is an expression drawn from Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831), but its application in psychoanalysis is only remotely connected with Hegelian philosophy, except through the work of Jacques Lacan, who quickly dissociated himself from such a connection. Freud, in his metapsychology, makes implicit use...