Babel Transfer and Curse

Abstract

Umberto Eco’s epigraph refers to the search for a perfect language and the babelic myth of the Tower of Confusion is quoted. This “confussio linguarum” leads to further relations about transference. The starting point is Freud, Breuer and the famous patient Anna O. A “biographical-theoretical” perspective of an analyst in a country and an in analytical group, who had Melanie Klein’s influence from the beginning, provides the setting for the testimony. The pair Transference-Countertransference and its “here and now” phenomenological dynamic as an unquestionable axiom is argued about. The enlightening relationship between Freud and Ferenczi is briefly described as an example of obstacles in transference and where the problem of the end of analysis became evident. Finally the author, after surveying several theories (Freud, Klein, Heimann, Winnicott, Bion, Lacan among others), draws up a balance and concludes that the remainder of this outlook is not one of failures but of colateral effects, promising for analysis.