The erotic transference: dream or delusion?

The erotic transference can be seen as the Janus face of clinical work in psychoanalysis: it may either arise out of the positive emotions necessary for the building of new shared realities, or be fueled by falsified and distorted constructions. In the former case, the erotic transference expresses the capacity to anticipate, or "dream," the emotional relationship with the object-which is why Freud valued its transformative aspect as one of the "forces impelling [the patient] to . . . make changes"-whereas in the latter it is equivalent to a flight from psychic reality and may be imperceptibly transformed into an actual delusion.