Comparative observations on transference and interpretation in psychoanalysis and individual psychology

Abstract

Psychoanalysis resorts to the total removal of emotionally overwhelming material; IP resorts to compensation, transforming this material in an analogical sense. For both disciplines, the aim is to prevent seriously destabilizing content from intruding into the ego system. However, we must get used to looking at the economic aspect of psychology in a positive light, thinking not about what is lost, but about what is transformed. The concept of transference in IP is therefore no longer understood as the ability to transfer past emotions to the present (psychoanalytic orthodoxy), but as the possibility of reproducing analogical copies of past experiences in the interpersonal relationship, which is therapeutic in nature. Interpretation is an indispensable tool for the therapist to read the evolution of the transference situation, but the importance of communicating the interpretation is much less, because communicating the interpretation to the other would be nothing more than attempting to contain the uncontainable, taking away space from the desire for knowledge