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The term <i>transference [[love]]</i> designates an emotional [[relationship]], determined by the [[analytic ]] [[situation]], of which the [[manifest ]] [[object ]] is the [[analyst]]; the task of the analyst in this circumstance is to trace the relationship back, without either [[satisfying ]] or smothering it, to its [[infantile ]] roots.Transference love is a defining feature of the [[psychoanalytic ]] method. [[Psychoanalysis ]] does not [[cure ]] by love, but love and the analyst play a mediating [[role ]] therein (Oppenheimer, Agnès, 1996). The set of inner problems generated by transference love, inasmuch as no direct [[satisfaction ]] is forthcoming, eventually frees love from [[repression]]: The truly intermediary role of transference love thus makes love possible.The transference follows the vicissitudes of love. When it is [[negative]], hostile, or governed by [[repressed ]] [[erotic ]] impulses it constitutes [[resistance]]. According to Sigmund [[Freud]], the "transference of friendly or affectionate [[feelings]]" which are "unobjectionable and admissible to [[consciousness]]" can contribute to a successful cure (1912b, p.105). Transference love allows the [[patient ]] to become attached to the aims of the [[treatment ]] as well as to the person of the analyst.Even as resistance, transference love is thus a prerequisite to cure: it "represents an artificial [[illness ]] which is at every point accessible to our [[intervention]]. It is a piece of [[real ]] [[experience]], but one which has been made possible by especially favorable [[conditions]]" (1914g, p. 154). One of the difficulties, or impossibilities, confronting the treatment is that some [[patients ]] refuse to resign themselves to the fact that the [[material ]] fulfillment of this surrogate love is not an option; such patients are "accessible only to 'the [[logic ]] of soup, with dumplings for arguments'" (1915a, p. 167). But can this still be considered love? It is clear that the manifest [[demand ]] for love covers up [[latent ]] considerations of [[another ]] kind. The patient's [[explicit ]] demand for [[recognition ]] also reflects a both demand for reparation, and shortcomings in their symbolizing capacity.Where affectionate feelings are transformed into an erotic demand, Freud compares what happens to an outbreak of fire during a theatrical performance. The analyst's [[interpretation ]] is what then allows the patient to grasp that they are mistaken as to [[time ]] and object.In "Observations on Transference-Love" (1915a), Freud promoted an attitude with respect to the [[complex ]] phenomenon of transference love that would later be characterized by Michael [[Balint ]] as "prudent." Discussing the analyst's difficulties when faced by transference love, and confining his remarks to the situation of a [[male ]] analyst and a [[female ]] patient, he called for prudence on the part of the doctor and warned, apropos of manifestations of transference love, "against any tendency to a counter-transference which may be [[present ]] in his own [[mind]]" (p. 160).A patient's passionate attachment to the analyst should indeed never be treated as evidence of the physician's personal irresistibility, but rather as an effect of the [[analytic situation ]] itself. For Freud, transference was a <i>mésalliance</i>, a "[[false ]] connection" (1895d, p. 303), and although the conduct of the cure required the analyst to maintain the transference love, they should nevertheless look upon it as "something unreal, as a situation which has to be gone through in the treatment and traced back to its [[unconscious ]] origins" (1915a, p. 166). At the same time, despite this "unreality," despite his emphasis on the inauthenticity, as it were, of the transference, Freud acknowledged that "We have no [[right ]] to dispute that the [[state ]] of [[being ]] in love which makes its [[appearance ]] in the course of [[analytic treatment ]] has the [[character ]] of a 'genuine' love." In fact transference love was no different from any [[other ]] kind of love, for "There is no such state [of being in love] which does not reproduce infantile prototypes" (p. 168). For Freud, it was this infantile aspect which gave love in general, and transference love in [[particular]], "its compulsive character, verging as it does on the pathological" (p. 168).What is repeated in transference love is [[frustration]], a demand not heard, never answered, which leads the patient to reassume the [[position ]] of a [[child ]] with respect to the analyst. A love transference is usually capable of being [[analyzed ]] and pressed into the service of the treatment, especially when it is moderate, as is most often the [[case]], and when it is first manifested as defensive maneuvers.Sometimes, however, the demand for love takes on a querulous character in passionate transferences: the patient's grievance concerning this frustration becomes [[aggressive ]] and exacting. An [[insistence ]] on reparation emerges, stressful for the analytic setting and challenging to the analyst's [[control ]] over the counter-transference. The handling of the treatment is particularly difficult with patients who come close to [[erotomania ]] or indeed sink into it. In such cases, as described by Freud, the situation may have an incendiary character. Behind the exacerbated demand for love and reparation that is seen in passionate transferences lie [[developmental ]] deficits and failures of the primary [[environment ]] that have distorted the patient's [[self]]. The eroticization of the transference serves as a [[defense ]] against a [[fear ]] of disintegration, which in turn derives from the primary [[depression ]] that such a patient will have experienced in the earliest [[stages ]] of their [[development]].The analyst's primary position in the face of transference love is that of the interpreter. As Freud wrote, transference love must be traced back to its unconscious roots. For this [[reason ]] abstinence must be the rule during the treatment. Considerations both technical and [[ethical ]] [[prohibit ]] the analyst from gratifying the solicitations of transference love. Like the physician bound by the Hippocratic oath, they must not draw personal profit from the analytic situation. But they must also never lose [[sight ]] of the fact that the patient is [[suffering ]] from a limited capacity to love for which infantile fixations are [[responsible]]. The analytic cure should make possible the restoration of a function that is of "inestimable importance" to the patient, one that they should not "dissipate in the treatment, but keep . . . ready for the time when, after [his or] her treatment, the [[demands ]] of real [[life ]] make themselves felt" (1915a, p. 169). Likewise, "If the patient's advances were returned it would be a great triumph for her"—and for the resistance—"but a [[complete ]] defeat for the treatment. She would have succeeded . . . in [[acting out]], in [[repeating ]] in real life, what she ought only to have remembered, to have reproduced as [[psychical ]] material." This "distressing episode would end in [[remorse ]] and a great strengthening of her propensity to repression" (p. 166).Clearly, the [[analysis ]] of the counter-transference is necessary so as to prevent the analyst's personal feelings, [[complexes ]] or inner [[resistances ]] from hindering the [[progress ]] of the treatment. The [[excitation ]] provoked in the analyst by the patient's demands and transferential projections, and notably the erotization of the transference, certainly put the analyst's [[superego ]] to the [[test]], but at a more fundamental level they challenge their relational skills and capacity for [[symbolization ]] as well as [[mastery ]] over their own [[desire ]] for reparation.Typically, [[acting-out ]] by the practitioner, in response to the patient's transference love, signals a [[lack ]] of professional maturity in dealing with the counter-transferential [[anxiety ]] aroused by the interpersonal situation, as well as a failure to deal with personal [[narcissistic ]] shortcomings or masochistic tendencies.

# [[Freud, Sigmund]], (1912b). The dynamics of transference. SE, 12: 97-108.# ——. (1914g). [[Remembering]], repeating and [[working]]-through (Further recommendations on the [[technique ]] of [[psycho]]-analysis II). SE, 12: 145-156.

# Freud, Sigmund, and [[Breuer]], Josef. (1895d). Studies on [[hysteria]]. SE,2.