Unformulated Experience and Transference

TRANSFERENCE DOES NOT ATTAIN a form compatible with words until that moment in the treatment in which it is described. In fact, the words used to describe transference give it its shape and meaning. Prior to its description transference is not explicitly meaningful. Unformulated transference exists in a vague and indeterminate state which, if it were worded, could be spoken in more than one way, perhaps several ways. And since the description eventually chosen is jointly chosen by patient and analyst, the very shape and character of the patient's transference experience, its warp and woof and not just its meaning, is a product not only of the patient, but also of the analyst, and of the interaction between the two. These points have been approached from several directions in the psychoanalytic literature, especially from the interpersonal perspective. I will approach them through a discussion of language.