A Cry of Fire: Some Considerations on Transference Love

Abstract

This chapter discusses the relation into certain letters Sigmund Freud wrote to C. G. Jung and Pastor Pfister several years earlier. The evolution of psychoanalytic thought on the type of patient described by Freud as sensitive only to “the logic of soup, with dumplings for arguments,” to whom he attributes an “elemental passionateness,” has brought about a differentiation in transference love. The semantic field configured in “Observations on Transference-Love” is identical with that of the letters. A substantial concordance exists among all the psychoanalytic schools on the resistance mobilized by transference love. Investigation would be necessary to determine what role the analyst could play in the genesis of this sort of transference. This difference between erotic transference and erotized transference has imposed itself on the vocabulary and the conceptualization of transference love. As the pathology considered broadens, so too will the modalities of transference love.