Übertragung

German übertragen meant to carry over, transfer, or transmit — the same root as translation (literally 'carrying across'). Freud initially regarded transference as an obstacle: patients who fell in love with him or became hostile were contaminating the analytical relationship with feelings that belonged elsewhere. He considered it a complication to be cleared away.

By 1905, in his case study of Dora, Freud had reversed his view. The transference was not an obstacle — it was the primary data. Patients were re-enacting their earliest relationships in the consulting room, treating the analyst as parent, sibling, or lover. The analyst's job was to recognize these transfers and interpret them, not eliminate them. The analysis happened in the transference.

Freud also identified counter-transference: the analyst's own emotional responses to the patient. Initially considered a problem — the analyst's feelings were interference — counter-transference was later rehabilitated by Melanie Klein, Donald Winnicott, and Wilfred Bion as a diagnostic tool. What the analyst felt toward the patient was data about the patient.

Today transference describes any unconscious redirection of feelings from one person to another — not just in analysis. We transfer feelings onto teachers, bosses, authority figures, and strangers who resemble people from our past. Freud's accident in the consulting room described a mechanism that turns out to be fundamental to human relationship.