Transference

“ For communication defined as strict transference of or participation in identical experiences does not occur. This is not a heart-breaking conclusion. No general theory, in fact, as to the nature or conditions of experiences can affect their value. For value is prior to all explanations. If actual transference and participation did occur we should of course be compelled to adopt a transcendental theory. ”

“ This conception of the transference is, you will have noted, most intimately connected with the acceptance of the idea of biological "duties" By this term you must understand those tendencies or motives in human beings giving rise to civilisation, as inevitably as in the bird they give rise to the exquisitely woven nest, and in the stag to the production of antlers. ”

“ Another kind of displacement which seems hard to believe possible until it is repeatedly encountered in intelligent human beings is the process called transference, by which everybody at some time or other acts toward the people he meets, not according to rational standards but according to old unconscious attitudes toward other people. Each of us carries, within, subconscious pictures of the people who surrounded us when we were children ”

“ I need not enter into particulars, but I will just say that the conditions under which apparent transference of thought occurs from one or more persons, steadfastly thinking, to another in the same room blindfold and wholly disconnected from the others, seem to me absolutely satisfactory, and such as to preclude the possibility of conscious collusion on the one hand or unconscious muscular indication on the other. ”

“ The essence of the social conception of life consists in the transference of the aim of the individual life to the life of societies of individuals: family, clan, tribe, or state. This transference is accomplished easily and naturally in its earliest forms, in the transference of the aim of life from the individual to the family and the clan. The transference to the tribe or the nation is more difficult and requires special training. ”

“ In order to aid the imagination in conceiving the transference of property, we take the sensible object, and actually transfer its possession to the person, on whom we wou'd bestow the property. The suppos'd resemblance of the actions, and the presence of this sensible delivery, deceive the mind, and make it fancy, that it conceives the mysterious transition of the property. And that this explication of the matter is just, appears hence, that men have invented a symbolical delivery, to satisfy the fancy, where the real one is impracticable. ”

“ We have now run over the three fundamental laws of nature, that of the stability of possession, of its transference by consent, and of the performance of promises. ”

“ The student will observe also, that however carefully the facts are selected bearing on this one point of thought transference, it is [113] impossible, so intimately related are the branches of psychic science, to have them entirely free from the possibility of other explanations. Granting that thought may be transferred from one mortal to another, admits that a spirit may transfer its thoughts to a mortal also, and hence a spirit seeing a friend in distress may act as a messenger. ”

“ Among associations other than those of family relationship Similarity as a basis of displacement by means of which the process of displacement is brought about, those depending on mental or physical similarity are probably the most important; of all the available methods of transference, they are too, in many respects, the easiest, most natural and the least liable to cause pathological aberrations of development. ”

“ On the one hand thought transference or telepathy (q.v.) appears to be insufficient, unless we assume that the powers of a medium far transcend anything demonstrable in ordinary telepathic experiments; for the facts stated by or through the medium about the communicator seem in many cases to be known in their entirety to no single living person. ”

“ Among those to whom such transference most frequently and regularly takes place are to be found—nurses, teachers, school prefects, police officers, employers, professional or military superiors, or persons occupying general positions of command, such as magistrates, statesmen or kings. ”

“ I wrote that the doctor's personality has a power for healing because the patient reads the doctor's personality: not that he produces a cure through love of the doctor. The doctor cannot prevent the patient's beginning to behave himself towards his conflicts just as the doctor himself behaves, for nothing is finer than a neurotic's intuition. But every strong transference serves this same purpose. If the doctor makes himself charming he buys off from the patient a series of resistances which he should have overcome, and whose overcoming will certainly have to be gone through later on. ”

“ Psychoanalysis has found as its first task the explanation of the neuroses; it has taken the two facts of resistance and transference as starting points, and by bearing in mind the third fact of amnesia in the theories of repression, it has given justification to the sexual motive forces of the neuroses and of the unconscious. Psychoanalysis has never claimed to give a perfect theory of the human psychic life, but has only demanded that its discoveries should be used for the completion and correction of knowledge we have gained elsewhere. But Alfred Adler's theory goes far beyond this goal. ”

“ There are two considerations which make me most reluctant to accept the doctrine of transmigration—the one is that when we leave our human frames and enter into those of dog or slug, what wretchedness it will be for us to adapt our minds and feelings to doggish or sluggish limits. ”

“ Further problems are connected with the possibility of repeated conversions of the same man, the necessity of a single strongly marked conversion completed in a single process, the significance of sudden conversion of persons in a highly emotional state, such as has been common in revivalist meetings, especially in Wales and the United States of America. Conversions of the last kind have followed frequently on striking physical phenomena, perceived in many cases only by the convert himself, such as a sudden bright light or a noise like a clap of thunder. ”

“ Transmigration, in some form, has certainly been, if not hereafter to be, the lot of man. I do not believe the Platonic conception of this great truth to be the correct one, nor that man will ever undergo the doom again; yet. that the soul has reached its present through many an inferior state, is a self-evident fact to me. ”

“ The Puddlesby Psychical Society believes in the Transmigration of Souls. As I am not a member myself I'm afraid that that is all I can tell you about it. It is a little difficult at first sight, perhaps, to see the connection between Transmigration and rubber tyres, but if you will have patience I think I can promise to show you that at least.
One night our Mr. Bowles came home late from a meeting of the P.P.S., fell asleep at once and had what he regarded as a "transmigratory experience in a retrogressive sense." The world was not the world he knew. ”

“ The residence or continuance of one nation in one place is not of the law of nature, which (being in itself immutable) would admit no transmigration of people or transplantations of nations. But I will propound unto you two grounds of nature, as more proper to this purpose. ”

“ What, we may well ask, was the original cause and motive of the doctrine of transmigration? Something may be said in answer, though not at all enough for full explanation. The theory that ancestral souls return, thus imparting their own likeness of mind and body to their descendants and kindred, has been already mentioned and commended as in itself a very reasonable and philosophical hypothesis, accounting for the phenomenon of family likeness going on from generation to generation. But why should it have been imagined that men’s souls could inhabit the bodies of beasts and birds? ”

“ Consequently, to the average mind of the modern Western world, the doctrine of transmigration remains a mere fancy, although, as we shall immediately see, it has a strange poetic charm, a deep metaphysical basis, and a high ethical and religious quality.
The first ground on which the belief rests is the various strong resemblances, both physical and psychical, connecting human beings with the whole family of lower creatures. They have all the senses in common with us, together with the rudiments of intelligence and will. ”

“ But these higher and more fortunate beings were considered to be also subject to the law of transmigration, and, unless they obtained saving knowledge, to be on a lower level than the man who had obtained such knowledge. ”

“ At each stage the germinal soul represents the totality, the net outcome of its existences, as in each generation of a plant the seed may be said to do. So far, the doctrine of transmigration is a doctrine of the evolution of a soul, a declaration that in a sense we are all that we have been, that virtue and vice will have their reward, that in a sense "men may rise on stepping stones of their dead selves." ”

“ In case of illness, you will already have taken the necessary steps to transfer the property to another agent who, in your opinion, is as completely honest as you are, and in case of death, you will already have taken the necessary steps to bequeath the property to the same agent ”

“ As it seems that the first conception of souls may have been that of the souls of men, this being afterwards extended by analogy to the souls of animals, plants, &c., so it may seem that the original idea of transmigration was the straightforward and reasonable one of human souls being re-born in new human bodies, where they are recognized by family likenesses in successive generations. ”

“ Like the doctrine of evolution itself, that of transmigration has its roots in the world of reality; and it may claim such support as the great argument from analogy is capable of supplying.
Everyday experience familiarizes us with the facts which are grouped under the name of heredity. Every one of us bears upon him obvious marks of his parentage, perhaps of remoter relationships. More particularly, the sum of tendencies to act in a certain way, which we call "character," is often to be traced through a long series of progenitors and collaterals. ”

“ As illustrating transfers found to be related to purposes associated with life, rather than with the distribution of property in anticipation of death, the Government mentions transfers made 'for the purpose of relieving the donor of the cares of management or in order that his children may experience the responsibilities of business under his guidance and supervision.' The illustrations are useful but not exhaustive. The purposes which may be served by gifts are of great variety. ”

“ The correspondence by organic form of the brain with the will and understanding brings these down as inhabitants into the brain as their temporal home; the correspondence of the heart and lungs, by form again, with the will and understanding, brings them into commerce of motion with the body; and the human spirit from within by correspondence with the corporeal human form makes the man a citizen of the natural world. ”

“ You would have blind acknowledgment, blind obedience—I were then an unworthy convert. We shall soon be in port, then teach me, and convince me, if you will; I am ready to examine and confess, but on conviction only. ”

“ In this case we may distinguish two stages or degrees in the transposition: first, before we think of our own pulling, we say the object itself pulls; in the first transposition we say it pulls against us, its pull is the counterpart or rival of ours but it is still conceived in the same direct terms of effort; and in the second transposition this intermittent effort is made potential or slumbering in what we call strength or force. ”

“ A transfer, a large transfer, a little transfer, some transfer, clouds and tracks do transfer, a transfer is not neglected.
Pride, when is there perfect pretence, there is no more than yesterday and ordinary.
A sentence of a vagueness that is violence is authority and a mission and stumbling and also certainly also a prison. Calmness, calm is beside the plate and in way in. There is no turn in terror. There is no volume in sound.
There is coagulation in cold and there is none in prudence. Something is preserved and the evening is long and the colder spring has sudden shadows in a sun. ”

“ Acts may be called transitive, when the motion is communicated from the person of the agent to some foreign body: that is, to such a foreign body on which the effects of it are considered as being material; as where a man runs against you, or throws water in your face. ”

“ What parent, or grandparent, to the remotest living generation, would receive a descendant with anything but a smile, or a welcome, let him come when and how he will? If there be not room, or preparation, the deficiencies must be made up in welcomes ”

“ But I have also many physical, and I think some mental, advantages over the average man. Moreover, I am young and exceptionally strong. I give you my word of honour that in making my application I shall not conceal the facts about my short sight. Having lodged my application for transfer, it will be for the authorities to say whether they will take me or leave me. Please, please, give your approval to my putting in such an application. Occasions come to every man when he has to make up his mind for himself and by himself—as I did about my move to the Modern side of Dulwich. ”

“ There is, to be sure, another frequent way of describing our consciousness of succession, — and a way that on the whole I find unsatisfactory. According to this view, events come to us in succession in our experience, — let us say the words of a spoken verse, — and then something often called the synthetic activity of the mind supervenes, and later binds together into unity, these successive facts, so that when this binding has taken place we then recognize the whole fagot of experience as a single succession. ”