Third footnote to the post titled “Humble”

Freud had a very peculiar and specific way of dealing with depressed and melancholic patients. He would allow the patient to engage in free association, to talk in a sense, and would allow the patient to talk only to a certain point. Namely, to the point where the patient would admit their fixation on a love object. Once the patient would confess their fixation on a love object, Freud would dismiss the patient and never see them again. Hence, the idea or the notion that a fantasy is at the heart of transference between patient and doctor and is thus at the heart of psychoanalysis, given that transference is the name of the game.