Transference: The Melody of the First Bond. Perspectives from modern psychoanalysis and infant research.

This Thesis explores the concept of Transference, as a fundamental phenomenon in psychoanalysis, especially in the Analytic Relationship. In the first chapter, the construct will be presented from a classical perspective, recalling the contributions of Sigmund Freud, Melanie Klein, Wilfred Bion, Donald Winnicott and Jacques Lacan, where it has been presented mainly as a form of resistance, but also as a resource for therapeutic change. The analytic relationship is considered as a result of unconscious processes and as a repetition of early object relations.  In the second chapter transference will be addressed through a modern psychoanalytic perspective, that builds bridges with Neuroscience. Mauro Mancia’s work links the unrepressed unconscious and the implicit memory to the nonverbal and prosodic dimensions of the analytic relation. The phenomenon of Transference is presented through the lens of neuroscientific findings on implicit and explicit memory, and the musicality of the analytic dialogue. Subsequently, there will be a chapter dedicated to the contribution of Infant Research, especially on Beatrice Beebe and Frank Lachmann’s work, which studies mother-infant interactions and how preverbal relational patterns are encoded in the implicit memory, then reemerging in the therapeutic relationship and transference dynamics. The last chapter will consist of a comparison between similarities and differences among traditional psychoanalysis and modern perspectives, considering Infant research contribution. While the first stresses repression and symbolic reconstruction, contemporary approaches consider the role of musicality, prosody and preverbal experiences. In conclusion, the aim of this work is to consider transference not only as a repetition of something that belongs to past experiences, but also as a phenomenon where implicit relational patterns are enacted. Classical psychoanalysis, modern perspectives and infant research all contribute to reveal the complexity of this phenomenon that links memory, early experiences and the analytic relationship. This will give the possibility to construct new symbolic meanings of the past and new relational experiences.