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[[Displacement ]] of the [[transference]], also called lateral transference, is a [[defense ]] in which transference is directed away from the [[analyst ]] to a [[third ]] party or an [[activity ]] that both conceals and represents undesirable aspects of the transference. The [[idea ]] of displacement of the transference originated in [[Freud]]'s technical writings. In "On beginning the [[treatment]]" (1913), Freud cautioned [[analysts ]] [[about ]] sessions that were too infrequent, which allowed the [[analysis ]] to wander down side paths, and about [[patients ]] who discussed their treatment with close friends every day, which would [[cause ]] a "leak" in the analysis and the transference. In "[[Remembering]], [[repeating]], and [[working]]-through" (1914), he also said that the [[patient]]'s transference is revealed "not only in his personal attitude to his doctor but also in every [[other ]] activity and [[relationship ]] which may occupy his [[life ]] at the [[time]]" (p. 151).

Later, other authors (for example, [[Daniel Lagache ]] and Michel Neyraut) mentioned displacement of the transference when discussing transference, usually [[speaking ]] of it as [[resistance ]] of a sort. Not until the [[work ]] of [[Alain ]] Gibeault and Evelyne Kestemberg (1981) was a positive [[role ]] attributed to it. For these authors, the displacement of the transference prevents only the [[awareness ]] of the transference, not the [[analysand]]'s [[unconscious ]] [[cathexis ]] in the analysis and with the analyst. In the analysand, the [[external ]] [[object ]] nevertheless maintains a [[symbolic ]] link with the analyst and really represents the [[internal]]-[[object relation ]] resulting from the [[repetition ]] of an [[infantile ]] [[experience]]. These authors nevertheless recognize that the displacement of the transference, even if it is sometimes useful (notably in cases of [[character ]] [[neurosis]], where it moderates the direct confrontation with an archaic [[imago ]] that is too threatening), may also interrupt the [[analytic ]] [[process ]] if it becomes too fixed and impervious to [[interpretations]].

In the work of François Duparc, the displacement of the transference has been linked to analysands' difficulties in representing [[traumatic ]] experiences in their histories and in connecting the affects mobilized by treatment to sufficiently elaborated representations. Thus the displacement of the transference could be considered as a less [[apparent ]] aspect of [[negative ]] transference, that is, of the invisible transference that Freud complains about in "Analysis terminable and interminable" (1937) in connection with his analysis of Sándor Ferenczi. Lateralization of the transference would be a primary defense and counter-cathexis of a nonrepresentable or not yet represented experience. By means of a displacement of the transference, the patient might be trying to protect the analyst from a violent [[discharge ]] in the transference, which the analyst could not bear without a traumatizing counter-transferential reaction.

One can describe a range of transferences, according to their greater or lesser lateral aim: the direct transference, which in the [[case ]] of traumatic [[material ]] induces disturbing and strange counter-transferential experiences; transference on a [[model]], which is more protective because the model is the inert part of the transference that limits the involvement of nonrepresentable experiences; and finally displacement of the transference, which aims at protecting both the patient and the analyst from a traumatic outbreak.

See also: [[Counter-transference]]; Negative therapeutic reaction; Transference.[[Bibliography]]