Transference: A Cliché?

Abstract: In this essay, Weber uses the concept of transference in Freud and Nietzsche to think about singularity in a way that emphasizes its relational and differential nature. Weber focuses on the Freudian term Übertragung , which is usually translated into English as transference but which, as Weber shows, is far more complicated than that word implies. Noting that Freud calls this term a “cliché” ( Klischee in German), Weber shows how this term itself is more interesting than we usually give it credit to being as it denotes the way that transference is done over and over, that this repetition is itself what constitutes the cliché as such (and hence not an entirely negative thing). Similarly, Weber shows that Nietzsche sees the singularity of the psyche itself as a set of reiterations that are never identical but create in their pattern the sedimentations of the self. Between these two authors, Weber finds the grounds for how a self can be identical to itself even as it is never the same, offering how relationality—differential and deferential—is built into subjectivity as such.