Transference Neurosis: Psychoanalytic Meaning and Clinical Use
Author: Ukrainian Psychological Hub · Published: September 30, 2026 · Editorial Policy
Transference neurosis is a psychoanalytic process concept describing a way in which a patient’s recurring conflicts, expectations, feelings, defenses, and relationship patterns can become concentrated in the relationship with the analyst during treatment. Its classic formulation comes from Sigmund Freud’s 1914 paper Remembering, Repeating and Working-Through. Freud described analysis as turning repetition into material that could be observed and worked through within the transference. The term belongs to the history and theory of psychoanalysis; it is not a current psychiatric diagnosis.
That distinction is essential. DSM-5-TR, published by the American Psychiatric Association in 2022, does not define transference neurosis as a mental disorder, and the World Health Organization’s ICD-11 Clinical Descriptions and Diagnostic Requirements likewise does not use it as a diagnostic category. A clinician may use the phrase as a psychoanalytic formulation of what is happening inside a treatment relationship, but it does not supply a DSM-5-TR or ICD-11 diagnosis, a billing code, or a one-to-one modern diagnostic equivalent.
For the broader historical meaning of neurosis, see Neurosis: What It Means Today, Symptoms, History, and Modern Diagnoses. For the historical diagnostic families once grouped under neurosis, see Types of Neurosis: Historical Categories and Their Modern Equivalents.
What Is Transference Neurosis?
In classical psychoanalytic language, transference neurosis is the temporary organization of a patient’s characteristic neurotic conflicts around the analyst and the analytic situation. Instead of the important conflict appearing only in outside relationships, memories, symptoms, fantasies, or habits, elements of it are repeated in the treatment relationship itself. The analyst then treats that repetition as clinical material to be understood rather than as a separate disease that has newly appeared.
Freud’s 1914 account is unusually concrete. He wrote that the patient often repeats rather than simply remembers, and that transference becomes a field in which this repetition can unfold. He described the resulting condition as an “artificial illness” and as an intermediate region between illness and ordinary life. In the same passage, he said that the patient’s ordinary neurosis could be replaced by a “transference-neurosis” that was accessible to therapeutic work. The point of “artificial” was not that the experience was fake. Freud explicitly treated it as real experience produced under the special conditions of analysis.
Later psychoanalytic authors did not settle on one universal definition. Historical reviews by Gail S. Reed, E. M. Weinshel, and Hans W. Loewald show that the term accumulated several meanings and technical assumptions. That variation is one reason a modern reader should ask which psychoanalytic author, school, and period is using the phrase before treating it as a stable technical label.
The Most Important Terminological Trap: “Transference Neurosis” Has More Than One Freudian Use
Freud used closely related wording in two historical senses that should not be collapsed. The singular process concept discussed in this article concerns what develops within analytic treatment: a patient’s conflict and repetition become organized in the transference to the analyst. In other writings, Freud also used the plural expression “transference neuroses” for a class of disorders, historically including forms such as hysteria and obsessional neurosis, contrasted in his metapsychology with “narcissistic neuroses.”
The distinction is visible even in the editorial note to the Standard Edition text of Remembering, Repeating and Working-Through, which points out the connection between the special technical use of “transference-neurosis” and Freud’s broader use of “transference neuroses” for hysteria and obsessional neurosis. The Freud Edition bibliography for Standard Edition Volume XII confirms the sequence of the key technical papers: The Dynamics of Transference (1912), On Beginning the Treatment (1913), Remembering, Repeating and Working-Through (1914), and Observations on Transference-Love (1915).
This article owns the singular clinical-process intent. When the phrase refers to an old nosological class, the historical classification must be reconstructed separately. Neither sense should be imported into twenty-first-century DSM or ICD diagnosis as though the terminology had remained unchanged.
Freud’s 1914 Model: Remembering, Repeating, and Working Through
Repetition becomes visible in the present relationship
Freud’s key move was to treat some behavior in analysis as repetition of earlier relational patterns rather than as a simple report about the past. In Remembering, Repeating and Working-Through, he describes patients reproducing attitudes, expectations, affects, and patterns in action. The transference is therefore not merely a conscious statement such as “you remind me of my father.” It may be expressed in how the patient expects the analyst to respond, how trust is negotiated, how criticism is anticipated, how closeness or distance is managed, and how the treatment itself is used or resisted.
The analytic relationship becomes a concentrated field for conflict
Within the classical model, a conflict that has been distributed across symptoms and relationships can become especially vivid in relation to the analyst. The analytic frame gives repeated relational expectations a stable setting in which they can be noticed across time. This concentration is what gives the concept its technical importance: the treatment relationship becomes one place where the patient’s habitual way of organizing experience is available for observation and interpretation.
Working through is a process, not a single insight
Freud did not describe interpretation as a one-time explanation that instantly removes a pattern. His 1914 paper introduced the technical importance of working through: repeatedly encountering, recognizing, and elaborating resistance and repetition. In this model, the transference neurosis is useful precisely because the pattern can recur under conditions in which it can be examined rather than remaining invisible.
Resolution meant changing the relationship to the repeated conflict
In the classical account, analytic work aims to loosen the compulsion to repeat and increase the capacity to recognize connections between present reactions, earlier relational experience, fantasy, defense, and conflict. Later psychoanalytic traditions reformulated this aim in different language, including object relations, attachment, relational, interpersonal, and mentalization-oriented concepts. Those later frameworks should not simply be retroactively attributed to Freud.
Transference vs Transference Neurosis
Transference is the broader concept. It refers, in psychoanalytic and psychodynamic traditions, to ways in which expectations, feelings, wishes, fears, and relational templates shaped by earlier relationships influence how a person experiences someone in the present, including a therapist. Transference can be momentary, subtle, positive, negative, conscious, partly conscious, or outside awareness.
Transference neurosis is narrower and historically more theory-laden. It refers to an organized development of transference phenomena within the analytic process, classically understood as a reworking or reappearance of the patient’s neurosis in relation to the analyst. Reed’s 1990 reconsideration proposed reserving the term for an unfolding and increasingly specific set of transferences and related unconscious fantasy or memory complexes, while emphasizing that it may appear through enactments rather than through explicit conscious feelings about the analyst.
Accordingly, every instance of transference is not a transference neurosis. A patient can expect criticism from a therapist, idealize the therapist, feel unusually competitive, fear abandonment, or become angry after an interpretation without this automatically establishing the full classical construct. The broader phenomenon is transference; the more organized process concept requires a specific theoretical and clinical formulation.
Transference Neurosis, Infantile Neurosis, and Ordinary Neurosis
Classical psychoanalytic writing often connects three levels of description. The “infantile neurosis” refers to Freud’s reconstruction of childhood conflict and defensive organization; the patient’s “ordinary neurosis” refers to the symptomatic and relational difficulties for which treatment is sought; the “transference neurosis” refers to the treatment-based reorganization of those conflicts around the analyst. These are concepts within a historical psychoanalytic model, not three modern DSM-5-TR diagnoses.
The relationship among these terms became controversial. Phyllis Tyson’s 1996 reformulation notes that transference neurosis had been treated as a hallmark of psychoanalysis while also acquiring multiple meanings. Tyson argued for clarification and developmental reformulation rather than assuming that every analyst meant the same thing by the term.
How a Transference Neurosis Was Historically Thought to Develop
In the classical model, treatment does not manufacture an unrelated illness. The analytic setting provides conditions in which pre-existing patterns of conflict and relationship are repeatedly activated. The analyst becomes an important object within the patient’s psychological field, and feelings or expectations that have roots elsewhere can become attached to the analyst and to the rules, frustrations, separations, interpretations, and asymmetries of treatment.
Historically, analysts looked for recurring configurations rather than a single dramatic event: repeated expectations of rejection after closeness; recurring efforts to win approval; distrust after dependence; idealization followed by disappointment; competition with the analyst; fear of humiliation; demands for rescue; withdrawal after perceived intrusion; or enactments around boundaries and separation. These examples illustrate a psychoanalytic way of organizing clinical observations. None is specific enough to diagnose a mental disorder, and none by itself demonstrates a transference neurosis.
The concept has also been used to understand symptoms emerging within treatment. François Sirois’s 2008 paper on the “transference symptom” describes such a symptom as a possible moment in the crystallization of a transference neurosis and compares it with enactment. That is a specialized psychoanalytic formulation, not a general medical explanation for new symptoms during psychotherapy.
Positive and Negative Transference Are Not Diagnoses
Classical psychoanalysis distinguished affectionate, trusting, idealizing, dependent, erotic, hostile, suspicious, and competitive forms of transference. “Positive” and “negative” in this literature describe the emotional valence and technical role of transference phenomena; they are not judgments about whether a patient is good or bad, and they are not diagnostic categories.
A warm alliance can coexist with conflictual transference, and hostile feelings can sometimes be discussed productively. Conversely, idealization or apparent cooperation can function defensively. The clinical question in psychoanalytic work is not simply whether the feeling is positive or negative, but what pattern it forms, how it changes, what triggers it, and how it affects the capacity to think and work within treatment.
Transference Neurosis vs Therapeutic Alliance
The therapeutic alliance concerns collaborative aspects of treatment such as agreement on goals, agreement on tasks, and the working bond. Transference concerns how relational expectations and meanings are brought into the therapeutic relationship. The constructs can interact, but they are not synonyms. A patient may have a strong alliance while also experiencing intense transference; a rupture in the alliance may involve transference, realistic disagreement, therapist behavior, or several factors at once.
Modern measurement research reinforces the need to keep constructs distinct. A 2025 systematic review of transference assessment identified 15 transference measures across psychotherapy research and emphasized continuing uncertainty about how transference relates to outcomes and to therapeutic alliance. This literature operationalizes transference in researchable ways; it does not establish “transference neurosis” as a current diagnostic entity.
Transference Neurosis vs Countertransference, Projection, and Enactment
Countertransference
Countertransference refers to the therapist’s emotional, cognitive, bodily, and relational responses in the therapeutic situation, although definitions vary by theoretical school. Transference describes the patient’s relational organization as understood within a framework; countertransference concerns the therapist side of the interaction. Contemporary relational approaches often examine the two together, but they remain analytically distinguishable.
Projection
Projection is a defense concept concerning the attribution of internal states or impulses to another person. Transference is broader: it can include expectations, meanings, affective responses, and relational templates without requiring projection as the mechanism. Calling every misreading of a therapist “projection” oversimplifies both concepts.
Enactment
Enactment generally refers to patterns that are expressed through interaction rather than only represented in words. Some later authors use enactment language where earlier analysts might have emphasized the transference neurosis. Reed’s clinical reconsideration and Sirois’s account of transference symptoms both illustrate how the field moved toward closer attention to what analyst and patient do together, not only what the patient consciously feels.
Transference-Focused Psychotherapy
Transference-focused psychotherapy is the name of a contemporary manualized psychodynamic treatment approach. It should not be confused with the historical construct of transference neurosis. A review by Levy and Scala distinguishes transference as a psychological process, transference interpretations as therapist interventions, and treatments that deliberately focus on transference. Similar words therefore refer to different levels: phenomenon, intervention, treatment model, and historical process concept.
How the Concept Changed After Freud
The literature never converged on a single post-Freudian definition. Weinshel’s 1971 survey documented the breadth of usage, while Loewald’s 1971 discussion examined both the concept and the clinical phenomenon. The persistence of debate means that “transference neurosis” should be read as school- and era-dependent psychoanalytic terminology rather than as a standardized construct with universally accepted criteria.
Reed’s historical review of Freud’s writings argues that Freud’s use of the term changed with his theory and became less circumscribed; Reed notes that Freud ceased using the term after 1926 rather than formally redefining it for his broader later model. Reed’s separate clinical reconsideration found differences and uncertainty among analysts and proposed a more specific process definition.
Owen Renik’s 1990 methodological paper retained what he regarded as a valuable idea within the concept: changes in the observable form of transference might serve as a criterion of analytic progress. At the same time, he argued that the concept had often been misapplied and proposed different clinical observations for identifying it.
Siegfried Zepf and Sebastian Hartmann’s 2004 reassessment explicitly addresses criticism of Freud’s concepts of transference and transference neurosis and offers another reconstruction of how interpretation and transference manifestations may relate. These competing reconstructions are evidence of a living theoretical debate, not of a single standardized clinical test.
A later review by Richard D. Chessick likewise revisited transference and transference neurosis in relation to contemporary clinical practice. Taken together, this history supports a precise conclusion: the phrase still has meaning within psychoanalytic discourse, but its meaning depends on the theoretical tradition and cannot be read as if it were a modern operational diagnosis.
What Does Modern Research Support?
Modern psychotherapy research offers evidence for studying transference-related processes, but this evidence should not be inflated into validation of every classical claim about transference neurosis. Researchers can examine whether prior relational representations shape current perception, code transference themes in sessions, measure therapist interventions, study alliance changes, and test associations with outcome. Those are narrower empirical questions than asking whether Freud’s entire 1914 model is literally correct.
The empirical literature on transference interpretation remains mixed. A 2012 systematic review by Brumberg and Gumz found heterogeneous and partly contradictory findings and concluded that patient characteristics, the amount and quality of interpretation, and immediate patient responses all mattered; it did not support a simple universal rule for how transference interpretation should be used.
A larger 2024 systematic review by Yilmaz and colleagues included 25 articles representing 21 studies of psychodynamic psychotherapy. Thirteen of the 21 studies reported significant improvement on at least one outcome after transference interpretation, but the studies varied substantially in patients, interventions, measures, designs, and outcomes. The authors therefore concluded that the heterogeneity prevented firm general conclusions about when and for whom transference interpretation improves outcome.
The 2025 systematic review by Marazzi and colleagues found that transference is measured with multiple observational, clinician-report, and patient-report instruments. The review describes transference as relevant across psychotherapies while emphasizing that its relationship with outcome remains ambiguous and that further work is needed to compare measures and clarify its relationship with the therapeutic alliance.
The strongest modern formulation is therefore modest and specific: transference is a clinically and empirically studied relational process; transference-focused interventions can be researched; some studies find benefits under particular conditions; and the historical construct of a full transference neurosis remains a psychoanalytic theoretical and clinical formulation rather than a modern diagnostic category or a uniformly operationalized scientific variable.
Current Diagnostic Status: DSM-5-TR and ICD-11
In current American psychiatric classification, the relevant manual is DSM-5-TR. The American Psychiatric Association describes DSM-5-TR as the current diagnostic classification and criteria system. Transference neurosis is not listed as a disorder. A person cannot receive a DSM-5-TR diagnosis of “transference neurosis.”
Internationally, the WHO’s current system is ICD-11. The 2024 ICD-11 CDDR provides clinical descriptions and diagnostic requirements for mental, behavioral, and neurodevelopmental disorders. Transference neurosis is not an ICD-11 diagnostic category. The term belongs to psychoanalytic theory and treatment-process language.
The historical classification context is different. ICD-10 grouped F40–F48 under “Neurotic, stress-related and somatoform disorders,” while modern ICD-11 reorganized mental-disorder classification. Likewise, the history of the DSM documents the major DSM-III shift toward explicit diagnostic criteria and a reorganization of earlier psychodynamic categories. These historical facts explain why old literature contains “neurosis” language without making transference neurosis a contemporary diagnosis.
For a classification-focused explanation, see Is Neurosis Still a Diagnosis? DSM-5-TR, ICD-11, and Modern Psychiatry and Neurotic Disorder: Meaning, History, and Why the Diagnostic Label Changed.
Does Transference Neurosis Map Onto a Modern Diagnosis?
No single modern diagnosis is the equivalent of transference neurosis. The term describes a process within a particular theory of treatment, whereas DSM-5-TR and ICD-11 diagnoses classify patterns of symptoms, duration, impairment, course, exclusions, and other clinical features. These are different levels of description.
A person in psychoanalytic treatment could meet criteria for an anxiety disorder, depressive disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, trauma-related disorder, personality disorder, another condition, several conditions, or no current mental-disorder diagnosis while a therapist still formulates transference phenomena. Conversely, having any modern diagnosis does not imply that a transference neurosis will develop.
This is why attempts to translate the term into “the modern diagnosis for transference neurosis” are conceptually misleading. Modern diagnosis must be based on the relevant current criteria and a clinical assessment, not inferred from the presence of a psychoanalytic process term.
Can a Therapist Diagnose Transference Neurosis?
A therapist can describe or formulate transference patterns within an appropriate psychodynamic or psychoanalytic framework. That clinical formulation is different from assigning a recognized psychiatric diagnosis. There is no DSM-5-TR or ICD-11 diagnostic code for transference neurosis, and there is no standardized symptom checklist that converts it into a current disorder.
The phrase can still be useful in supervision, case formulation, psychoanalytic writing, and discussion of treatment process when the theoretical meaning is explicit. It becomes misleading when it is presented to a patient as though it were a current medical diagnosis or used to replace assessment of symptoms, risk, functional impairment, medical causes, substance effects, or another mental-health condition.
What Might Clinicians Mean When They Use the Term Today?
Contemporary use varies. One clinician may mean a relatively classical Freudian process in which the patient’s central conflicts become organized around the analyst. Another may use the term more loosely for an intensified pattern of transference that becomes central to treatment. A third may avoid the term and describe the same clinical material through recurring relational themes, object relations, attachment expectations, interpersonal schemas, enactments, or rupture-and-repair processes.
Because these frameworks make different theoretical commitments, translation should be explicit. Saying that two clinicians notice the same recurrent fear of rejection does not mean they endorse the same explanation of why it occurs, what unconscious structure it reflects, or how it should be treated.
The broader historical term psychoneurosis has its own changing diagnostic and theoretical history. It should not be used as a shortcut for transference neurosis.
Clinical Use: What the Concept Can Contribute
Used carefully, the concept directs attention to a clinically important question: what is happening between patient and therapist that may reproduce a broader pattern? It encourages longitudinal observation rather than immediate labeling. A recurring reaction may become informative when its triggers, emotional sequence, expectations, defenses, and consequences can be followed across sessions and related to other relationships.
It also discourages treating the therapy relationship as a neutral window through which the clinician simply observes an external disorder. In psychoanalytic traditions, the relationship itself is part of the data. The patient’s experience of the therapist matters, and the therapist’s participation, timing, interpretations, boundaries, and mistakes can affect what unfolds.
At the same time, the concept does not license the therapist to explain every disagreement as the patient’s repetition of the past. A patient can react realistically to something the therapist actually did. Contemporary clinical practice requires attention to both historical pattern and present context. An interpretation that automatically locates the source of every problem inside the patient can become unfalsifiable and can obscure therapist responsibility.
The clinically useful question is therefore not “Is this transference or reality?” as though only one can be true. Past expectations and present events can interact. Good formulation considers the actual therapeutic situation, the patient’s established patterns, alternative explanations, and the effect of the therapist’s intervention.
Treatment Implications and the Evidence Boundary
There is no standalone evidence-based treatment called “treatment for transference neurosis” in modern diagnostic guidelines because transference neurosis is not a current disorder. In psychoanalysis and psychodynamic psychotherapy, clinicians may work with transference by noticing recurring patterns, exploring feelings and expectations toward the therapist, interpreting links when appropriate, and examining how the same organization appears elsewhere.
Research does not support a rule that more transference interpretation is always better. The 2012 and 2024 systematic reviews both emphasize heterogeneity and patient-by-treatment variation. Technique has to be judged in relation to the patient, the treatment model, the strength of the alliance, timing, the quality of the interpretation, and the clinical context.
If someone has clinically significant anxiety, depression, obsessive-compulsive symptoms, trauma symptoms, psychosis, mania, substance-related problems, eating-disorder symptoms, severe dissociation, self-harm risk, or another condition, treatment planning should be guided by assessment of that condition and the relevant current evidence. A psychoanalytic formulation can coexist with a modern diagnosis; it should not substitute for one when diagnostic assessment is needed.
What Transference Neurosis Does Not Mean
It does not mean that the therapist has literally infected the patient with a neurosis. It does not mean that treatment has created a new DSM-5-TR disorder. It does not mean that strong attachment to a therapist is inherently pathological. It does not mean that every emotional reaction to a therapist is irrational. It does not mean transference-focused psychotherapy. It does not mean a personality trait such as neuroticism. And it does not name a stage through which every successful psychotherapy must pass.
These distinctions matter because the phrase sounds more medical to a modern ear than its current status warrants. In twenty-first-century clinical language, it is best treated as a historically specific psychoanalytic process concept whose usefulness depends on the framework in which it is being used.
Common Misconceptions
“Transference neurosis is a current mental disorder.”
It is not. DSM-5-TR and ICD-11 do not list it as a diagnosis.
“It is simply another word for transference.”
Transference is broader. Transference neurosis historically refers to a more organized treatment process in which transference becomes a central expression of conflict and repetition.
“If I become attached to my therapist, I have transference neurosis.”
Attachment, trust, admiration, irritation, dependency, disappointment, or affection can occur in therapy for many reasons. No single feeling establishes the historical psychoanalytic construct, and the construct itself is not a current diagnosis.
“Freud’s term has one fixed meaning.”
The literature documents changing and competing meanings. Reed, Renik, Tyson, Zepf and Hartmann, and other authors have all reconsidered what should count as transference neurosis.
“Modern research proves the whole classical theory.”
Modern research supports studying transference processes and transference-related interventions. It does not convert the complete classical construct into an empirically established diagnosis or establish every historical mechanism Freud proposed.
“A therapist can ignore present reality because everything is transference.”
Present interactions matter. A clinically responsible formulation considers what the therapist actually said or did, the patient’s history and expectations, the therapeutic alliance, and alternative explanations.
How to Interpret the Term When You Encounter It
First, identify the date and theoretical tradition. A 1914 Freudian technical paper, a mid-twentieth-century psychoanalytic case report, and a contemporary relational paper may use the same phrase differently.
Second, identify the level of description. Is the author talking about a process inside treatment, an older class of neuroses, a theory of conflict, a symptom, or a modern diagnosis? Those are separate categories.
Third, check the classification system and edition. Historical DSM and ICD language cannot be transferred automatically to DSM-5-TR or ICD-11. The same word may survive in older literature after the classification that supported it has changed.
Fourth, separate evidence about transference from evidence about transference neurosis. Empirical studies of relational expectations, session processes, transference interpretations, or treatment outcome address parts of the broader territory. They should not be cited as if they validate an entire historical theoretical system.
Finally, if the term is being used in actual care, ask what the clinician means by it and how that formulation relates to the person’s current symptoms, goals, diagnosis if any, and treatment plan. Clear definitions protect both clinical communication and historical accuracy.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is transference neurosis a real diagnosis?
It is a real historical and psychoanalytic concept, but it is not a diagnosis in DSM-5-TR or ICD-11. Its current use belongs mainly to psychoanalytic theory, case formulation, and treatment-process discussion.
Who introduced the concept of transference neurosis?
The classic technical formulation is associated with Sigmund Freud. In his 1914 paper on remembering, repeating, and working through, he described replacing the ordinary neurosis with a transference-neurosis that could be worked with inside analysis.
Is transference neurosis the same as ordinary transference?
No. Transference is the broader phenomenon. Transference neurosis is a narrower, historically specific concept describing an organized development of transference within analytic treatment.
Is transference neurosis the same as “transference neuroses” in Freud’s diagnostic theory?
No. Freud also used “transference neuroses” as a historical class of disorders contrasted with narcissistic neuroses. The singular treatment-process concept and the plural nosological use are related within Freud’s theory but should be distinguished.
What symptoms does transference neurosis cause?
There is no modern diagnostic symptom list. Psychoanalytic descriptions focus on recurring relational expectations, affects, defenses, resistance, fantasies, enactments, and sometimes symptoms that become organized around the analytic relationship. Those observations are not specific enough to establish a modern diagnosis.
Does transference neurosis happen in every psychoanalysis?
Psychoanalytic traditions disagree about how central or necessary the construct is, and many contemporary clinicians use different conceptual language. It should not be treated as a universal mandatory stage of all psychotherapy.
Can transference neurosis occur in CBT or other therapies?
Transference-like relational expectations can occur in any therapy relationship. “Transference neurosis,” however, is a specifically psychoanalytic process concept. Other therapies may describe similar interpersonal events through different theoretical constructs.
Is transference neurosis harmful?
The classical theory treats its emergence as potentially useful because recurring patterns become available for therapeutic work. Intense treatment relationships can also be difficult, and any clinical concern should be understood in context rather than romanticized as a necessary sign of progress.
Can transference interpretations improve therapy outcomes?
Sometimes, but the evidence is not uniform. The 2024 systematic review found positive findings in a majority of included studies on at least one outcome, while high heterogeneity prevented firm conclusions about effectiveness across patients and treatments.
What is the modern equivalent of transference neurosis?
There is no direct modern diagnostic equivalent. Contemporary clinicians may study transference, interpersonal schemas, attachment expectations, alliance ruptures, enactments, or other relational processes, but those constructs are not interchangeable with the classical term and do not constitute a single replacement diagnosis.
Should I use the term for myself?
It is more useful as a historical or clinician-defined psychoanalytic concept than as a self-diagnosis. If a therapist uses it, ask what they mean, what observations support the formulation, and how it relates to your actual treatment goals and any current diagnosis.
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References
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