Transference Revisited: How Neurotic and Psychotic Patients Use Us Differently

Keynote Speaker
Bruce Fink, PhD

Discussant
Siamak Movahedi, PhD

• Nov 8, 2025

• 9:30am - 4:00pm ET

• Location: Virtual and In Person (NYC)

• Source/ Event Link: Center for Modern Psychoanalytic Studies

“Whereas Freud’s conception of transference as a repetition of a past situation fits work with neurotics, repetition is not so clearly involved in work with psychotics.  In some cases, there may appear to be no transference at all, but this does not mean that the psychotic has no transference; it is merely something quite different from that of the neurotic.  Most broadly, we could define transference as how the patient uses the analyst: the psychotic is trying to accomplish something with the analyst quite different from what the neurotic does.  In neurosis, the patient uses the analyst as a blank slate on which to project aspects of the past as well as present thoughts and feelings.  In psychosis, the patient uses the analyst in a variety of other ways, such as to achieve stabilization, which may take many forms and involve many different processes, such as idealization, sublimation, making a name for oneself, and so on.”