ABSTRACT
Freud described negative transference as well as the contrasting love for the analyst. Psychoanalysis, as practised tends to avoid intervening in the conflict between the two in favour of observing the conflict and understanding it and its unconscious roots. In the more contemporary psychoanalytic stance, consent implies the intention to discover, consciously, knowledge about unconscious relationships. The psychoanalyst proceeds by describing, as a kind of narrative, how the patient's mind comes to be broken up. Psychoanalytic progress enables the patient to be less trapped within the emotional force of the transference feelings, through knowing something about them. The concepts of paternalism and autonomy have become seriously confused and inadequate when the subject of the patient is dissolved into separate parts that are dispersed within the interpersonal field of the psychoanalytic setting. If the psychoanalyst tries to avoid becoming the patient's split-off consent to treatment, he risks a "therapeutic ambition", as Freud called it.
