a-general-introduction-to-psychoanalysis-sigmund-freud

Now we have every reason to correct our former dynamic conception of the
healing process, and to bring it into harmony with our new discernment. If
the patient is to fight the normal conflict that our analysis has revealed
against the suppressions, he requires a tremendous impetus to influence the
desirable decision which will lead him back to health. Otherwise he might
decide for a repetition of the former issue and allow those factors which have
been admitted to consciousness to slip back again into suppression. The
deciding vote in this conflict is not given by his intellectual penetration—which
is neither strong nor free enough for such an achievement—but only by his
relation to the physician. Inasmuch as his transference carries a positive sign,
it invests the physician with authority and is converted into faith for his
communications and conceptions. Without transference of this sort, or without
a negative transfer, he would not even listen to the physician and to his
arguments. Faith repeats the history of its own origin; it is a derivative of love
and at first requires no arguments. When they are offered by a beloved
person, arguments may later be admitted and subjected to critical reflection.
Arguments without such support avail nothing, and never mean anything in
life to most persons. Man's intellect is accessible only in so far as he is
capable of libidinous occupation with an object, and accordingly we have
good ground to recognize and to fear the limit of the patient's capacity for
being influenced by even the best analytical technique, namely, the extent of
his narcism.
The capacity for directing libidinous occupation with objects towards persons
as well must also be accorded to all normal persons. The inclination to
transference on the part of the neurotic we have mentioned, is only an
extraordinary heightening of this common characteristic. It would be strange
indeed if a human trait so wide-spread and significant had never been noticed
and turned to account. But that has been done. Bernheim, with unerring
perspicacity, based his theory of hypnotic manifestations on the statement
that all persons are open to suggestion in some way or other. Suggestibility in
his sense is nothing more than an inclination to transference, bounded so
narrowly that there is no room for any negative transfer. But Bernheim could
never define suggestion or its origin. For him it was a fundamental fact, and
he could never tell us anything regarding its origin. He did not recognize the
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