F eminism

&
Special Feature Contribution
Psychology
Feminism & Psychology
21(4) 529–535
V. (Counter-)transference ! The Author(s) 2011
Reprints and permissions:
and the politics of sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/0959353511422932
feminist therapy: Toward fap.sagepub.com

naming a new
‘problematics that has
no name’1
Kazuko Takemura
Graduate School of Humanities and Sciences, Ochanomizu University, Japan

Keywords
feminist therapy, transference, Freud, Lacan, politics, language, the Other, verbalizability

Since its introduction into Japan in 1980, feminist therapy has contributed to the
empowerment of Japanese women by encouraging them to address their problems
as socio-political issues rather than as personal or clinical matters. Recently, however,
the problems confronted by Japanese women have become more complicated2 owing
to the increasing diversity among women and to the transformation of social and
familial relationality, and now they might be seen as the ‘problems that have no
names.’ Feminist therapy needs to deal with such developing issues, constructing a
principle other than ‘the personal is political’ — which, however, is still as essential for
feminist therapy as it is for feminism as a whole. Put another way, feminist therapists
who counsel suffering women are actually in a position to recognize, earlier and more
directly than other feminists, the new problematics that Japanese women are facing
today, both socially and psychologically. But it is not an easy matter to discern some-
thing new without reducing it to a more familiar concept. For this purpose I shall
reconsider ‘transference’ and ‘counter-transference,’ terms originally employed by
Sigmund Freud and later developed by Jacques Lacan, and will examine the feminist
therapist’s awareness of new problematics in terms of therapist-client relationality.
It is my belief that there are many psychoanalytical concepts that could be appli-
cable to the Japanese context. Unfortunately, however, only a very few Japanese
feminist scholars have shown any interest in psychoanalytical thinking — and rarely

Corresponding author:
Kazuko Takemura, Graduate School of Humanities and Sciences, Ochanomizu University, 2-1-1 Otsuka,
Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, Japan
Email: takemura.kazuko@ocha.ac.jp
530 Feminism & Psychology 21(4)

for the purpose of criticizing it. In this article I would like to reexamine the concepts
of Freud and Lacan as a Japanese feminist scholar in order to explore the future
purpose of feminist therapy in Japan. The greater part of my discussion is concerned
with therapeutic relationality in general, but these arguments lay the groundwork for
consideration of the specific function to be performed by Japanese feminist thera-
pists who, on the one hand, stand close to women with problems and, on the other
hand, are committed to the local governments that employ them as counselors.3
This article consists of three sections: the first two are devoted to a reconsider-
ation of ‘transference’ and ‘counter-transference’ in terms of feminist therapy; the
last section then develops these arguments in considering the present situation in
which Japanese feminist therapy functions.

Transference and counseling

The introduction of transference in regard to feminist therapy may arouse in read-
ers a concern that this signals a return to pathologizing. But Freud himself, who
initially localized this phenomenon solely in the process of psychoanalytical treat-
ment (Breuer and Freud, 1955[1895]), later expanded his observations to include
daily human relationships (Freud, 1953[1905]). Verbalization of an unsolved past
does not mean simply an excavation of the repressed. Rather, dialogue with a
trusted and empathetic analyst encourages the analysand to relive past experiences
in the current setting, and to step out toward a new kind of relationality. This is a
situation that should be helpful for feminist therapy.
But frequently there is also a negative aspect of transference, including the
analysand’s resistance to unbearable recollections. Both positive and negative
transferences, however, actually work together to further the analysis, helping
the analysand, eventually, to come to terms with her traumatic past and to inte-
grate the painful emotions buried deep in the unconscious (Freud, 1958a[1912]). It
is clear from this that transference, including its negative aspect, is an important
tool in all therapies. Feminist therapists, however, can make use of it in a unique
way, focusing their attention upon (1) the power relation inherent in transference,
and (2) the social constructiveness of a client’s concealment of her past.
Transference is based on a hierarchy of knowledge — the naive analysand guided
by a knowledgeable analyst. This asymmetrical relationship was applied by Freud to
transference as it functions outside of psychoanalysis as well: ‘We [students] trans-
ferred on to them [teachers] the respect and expectations attaching to the omniscient
father of our childhood’ (Freud, 1955a[1914]: 244, italics mine). In what sense are
father, teacher, and analyst ‘omniscient’? What kind of knowledge do they have?
Half a century later, Jacques Lacan, while being emphatic about its importance
in the clinical setting, at the same time generalized the notion of transference in
light of the structure of inter-subjectivity. As he puts it, ‘[a]s soon as the subject
who is supposed to know exists somewhere, . . . there is transference’ (1978: 232),
and therewith desire is constituted. Lacan’s well-known formula, ‘Man’s [sic] desire
is the desire of the Other,’ becomes significant at this point: the Other does not
designate those actual individuals whom we meet in our daily lives as ‘other
Takemura 531

people’; but it is through inter-subjective encounter with actual individuals sup-

posed to embody the symbolic order that the human being ‘solidifies into a signi-
fier’ (1978: 199) and becomes a subject able to articulate his/her own desire as such.
Similarly, in feminist therapy the client’s recognition of her desire comes about
through the language which the therapist is supposed to embody. This could lead to
a reconceptualization of transference, because feminist therapy aims at empower-
ing clients to break out of the norms of the stereotypical gender roles required by
society, rather than at normalizing them into ‘acceptable’ social behavior.
Moreover, the Other itself, through which the signifier emerges, actually occupies
the locus of impossibility of signification, namely the site of a radical ‘lack.’ But this
lack, in feminist terms, could be redefined as something beyond that which is
implied by castration based upon sexual difference. In other words, the transference
that occurs in feminist therapy can offer an opportunity in which to subvert the
androcentricism implied in Lacan’s definition of transference, as well as in the
present social and cultural system.

Counter-transference, resistance, and acting-out

We must keep in mind that feminism is also no more than a socially constructed
perspective which emerges in different forms depending on the historical era.
Transferences produced in feminist therapy are also influenced by the social
milieu of the time and the individuality of each therapist. Freud took note of
this, stating that ‘no psycho-analyst goes further than his own complexes and
internal resistances permit,’ so that he is required to ‘continually carry it [self-
analysis] deeper while he is making his observations on his patients’ (1910: 145).
This view highlighted the importance of the analyzed analyst and contributed to
the institutionalization of ongoing consultation for therapists. How, then, does the
therapist’s newly-gained knowledge of herself facilitate her understanding of the
client’s ‘still-unverbalized’ problem?
Freud stressed the importance of the unconscious of the analyst. He argued that
the analyst ‘must turn his own unconscious like a receptive organ towards the
transmitting unconscious of the patient’ (1958b[1912]: 115-116). In order to
enhance the process of analysis, the analyst must keep him/herself vulnerable
to something unfamiliar by means of loosening self-identification. Contrary to
Freud’s intention, this encourages counter-transference reactions rather
than avoiding them. This sort of analysis invites both transference and counter-
transference, which interact with each other to create an in-between space where
the subjectivities of both analyst and analysand become fluid.
On the other hand, verbalization of the forgotten past can also be regarded as an
‘interrupt[ion of] the communication of the unconscious’ and ‘its closing up’ again
(Lacan, 1978: 130), because it limits the way in which the past is revealed by
speaking in a particular epistemic way. But the other aspect of transference (neg-
ative transference) can also open, as resistance to transference, another possible
channel of ‘communication of the unconscious.’ In what form, then, does this sort
of resistance manifest itself?
532 Feminism & Psychology 21(4)

Let us examine a case presented by Freud. ‘An elderly lady who had repeatedly
fled from her house and her husband,’ being unconscious of ‘her motives for
decamping in this way,’ came to treatment and showed, at first, ‘a marked affec-
tionate transference’ toward Freud, but soon she ‘decamped from me [Freud], too’
(1958c[1914]: 154, italics mine). Feminists could attribute her transference’s ‘inten-
sity with uncanny rapidity’ to the striking analogy between her husband and the
analyst, and her decampment from Freud to her unconscious discernment that the
doctor embodied the same phallogocentric values that she had been afflicted with in
her married life. Her resistance, therefore, is not indicative of a retrogressive rep-
etition of past behavior, but rather a positive attempt to remove herself — that is,
‘decamp’ — from the locus which required of her the same subordination as that
imposed by ‘her house and her husband.’
Freud devalues negative transferences, stating that in this stage ‘remembering’ is
often replaced by ‘acting out.’ What is overlooked here is the subversiveness inher-
ent in behavioral resistance. A clear separation of transference between productive
recollection in ‘the psychical sphere’ and regressive repetition in ‘the motor sphere’
(1958c[1914a]: 153) can prevent the analyst from noticing that the client’s actual
problem cannot be fully verbalized in the existing language, which is, in many
cases, the very cause of the client’s predicament. A therapist who interprets a cli-
ent’s behavior simply as regressive acting out can miss the client’s desperate appeal,
which cannot reveal itself in anything other than the form of apparently familiar
behavior because of its still-unverbalizable-ness. But it is often only through this
form of transference that the client can express herself, and it is through counter-
transference that the therapist can respond to such an appeal. The in-between space
of client and therapist is not linguistically structured, but often resonates with the
voiceless voices that resist the reduction and trivialization of problems through use
of the existing language.

Self-refexivity and questioning within the system

The problem of the aforementioned elderly woman, which Freud treated solely as
the problem of one particular individual, could now be regarded as ‘the problem
that has no name’ described by Betty Friedan half a century later. This is the public
and structural problem of a society that constructs women’s psychology in a [het-
ero]sexist way.4 Transference was considered by Freud to ‘create an intermediate
region between illness and real life’ (1958c[1914]: 154). But such a ‘real life’ set up as
a goal by the therapist could, in fact, be seen as nothing more than a ‘domain of
possible deception’ (Lacan, 1978: 133). Accordingly, (subversive) transference does
not simply encourage adaptation to a certain fixed and immutable social system.
Instead, it can transform the ‘domain of possible deception’ into something new,
allowing both client and therapist to develop a new language that can relocate their
problem and give it a name. But this is not an easy task, nor can it be ever fully
completed. In his last years Freud himself regarded ‘not only the therapeutic anal-
ysis of patients but his [the analyst’s] own analysis’ as ‘an interminable task’
(1955b[1937]: 249). Self-reflexive analysis is indeed ‘interminable’ — but perhaps
Takemura 533

in a different sense from Freud’s. It is interminable in the sense that naming is

fueled by the very impossibility of naming, which, paradoxically, urges us inces-
santly to seek more adequate names.
This is why the environment surrounding a therapist is an important issue. If a
therapist is forced to face such a task alone, without peer therapists, supervisors, or
researchers who share the same experience or the same awareness of the problem-
atics, she can come to feel isolated and powerless to resist what arises from her own
unconscious in order to defend against experiencing her own unrecognized inner
conflict. Nevertheless, according to a 2002 survey,5 only 38 percent of women’s
centers6 in Japan that offered counseling held regular case conferences, and no
more than 24 percent of them adopted the supervisory system. Another survey7
reported that, despite a desire to update their knowledge, most feminist therapists
hired as part-timers by local women’s centers could not afford, financially and/or
practically, to take courses or lectures provided by the National Women’s
Education Center or by local women’s centers. Collaboration with psychologists
in the academic world has not been widely developed in Japan, and there has been
even less interdisciplinary dialogue with researchers in fields other than
psychology.8
On the other hand, the fact that Japanese feminist therapists work for women’s
centers run by local governments could be seen as an advantage, because the
problematics emerging in therapeutic practice, which might reflect the reality of
women’s everyday lives in contemporary society, will not remain confined to the
counseling room, but might be considered more widely and taken into account in
the formulation of women’s policies. In this regard, despite their unstable status as
part-timers and the downsizing of services necessitated by recent budget deficits,
questions arising from the experiences of therapists, however embryonic and diffi-
cult to articulate, might possibly be conveyed to their governments more easily,
functioning to ongoing counter discourses from within the hegemonic power
embodied in the public organizations that they are working for. Specifically, the
position assigned to Japanese feminist therapists in local governments helps them
to avoid being involved in the hegemonic power structure because: (1) most of them
are working through women’s centers, which are a separate branch of city govern-
ment and were established expressly for the purpose of promoting gender equality;
and (2) their position as part-timers, paradoxically, allows them to work more
independently. However, feminist therapists are forced to follow certain regula-
tions set up by the governments that employ them — such as the number and
frequency of sessions, which are usually very limited and insufficient because of
budget constraints. Moreover, many city council members and mayors do not hold
an understanding attitude toward special counseling for women, and the adminis-
trators at women’s centers who might be able to mediate between therapists and
those in positions of power are sometimes transferred to other departments or
divisions just as their mediation efforts have gotten under way. It is for these
reasons that I emphasize the importance of substantive collaboration with politi-
cians and officials, in order for feminist therapists to politicize their own experi-
ences and discoveries gained from (counter-) transference with clients.
534 Feminism & Psychology 21(4)

Feminist therapy can, in many ways, call into question modern formulations of
the human psyche through counseling individuals with psychological problems. In
order to facilitate this questioning, more discussion and collaboration should be
encouraged amongst therapists themselves, as well as between therapists and other
specialists, such as academicians, politicians, and activists, who share the same
interest. Problematics related to psyche could be pursued by feminist therapists
united with other feminists through the ‘interminable’ and open-ended self-reflexive
(counter-) transference they experience in their therapeutic practices. This is pre-
cisely what feminist therapists can do, especially in Japan, where therapists hired by
local governments could act as the system’s self-subversive voice to encourage the
move toward a more liberated and ongoing formation of human psyche and body.

Notes
1. This article draws on and is adapted from a longer essay entitiled ‘Therapy as politics’
and originally included in New Horizons of Women’s Mental Health, edited by Kiyomi
Kawano (2005), published in Japanese. I am grateful to Kiyomi Kawano for clearing a
path for collaboration between theoretical research and clinical practice in the area of
women’s mental health and giving me an opportunity to contribute to this field.
2. See the survey conducted as part of a research project at the Institute for Gender Studies,
Ochanomizu University, entitled ‘Reconsideration of Support System for Women’s
Mental Health.’ I was engaged in this project as a research member. The result of the
survey is included in Kawano (2005: 192).
3. In Japan, the terms ‘counselor’ and ‘counseling’ are much more frequently used than
‘therapist’ or ‘therapy.’ But following the English idiom, the latter terms are used here.
4. By the term, ‘[hetero]sexism,’ Takemura means the coming together of sexism and het-
erosexism, working in tandem to establish modern sexual formation in capitalist society.
See Takemura (2003).
5. ‘Survey on Training for Therapists at Women’s Centers’ conducted by The National
Council of Women’s Centers in 2002. See Sakurai (2005: 147).
6. Since the enforcement of the Basic Law for a Gender-Equal Society in 1999, most
‘women’s centers’ run by local governments have been renamed ‘centers for gender
equality.’
7. See note 2.
8. There seems to be little likelihood that a future revision of the supervisory system for
feminist therapy could lead to any governmental control of feminist psychotherapy/coun-
seling services. Unfortunately or fortunately, feminist therapy has not yet gained strong
enough interest from governments that they recognize the necessity for its regulation.
Rather, further training or supervision could more likely be produced through collabo-
rations with academicians and academic institutes rather than through administrative
actions. In this sense as well, therapist–academician cooperation is needed.

References
Breuer J and Freud S (1955[1895]) Studies on hysteria. In: The Standard Edition of the
Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud [hereinafter referred to as SE] 2.
Trans. Strachey J et al. London: Hogarth Press, 19–305.
Freud S (1953[1905]) Fragment of an analysis of a case of hysteria. SE 7, 3–122.
Freud S (1955a[1914b]) Some reflections on schoolboy psychology. SE 13, 239–244.
Takemura 535

Freud S (1955b[1937]) Analysis terminable and interminable. SE 13, 209–253.

Freud S (1957[1910]) The future prospects of psycho-analytic therapy. SE 11, 139–151.
Freud S (1958a[1912a]) The dynamics of transference. SE 12, 97–108.
Freud S (1958b[1912b]) Recommendations to physicians practicing psycho-analysis. SE 12,
109–120.
Freud S (1958c[1914a]) Remembering, repeating and working through. SE 12, 145–156.
Kawano K (ed.) (2005) New Horizons of Women’s Mental Health. Tokyo: Commons.
Lacan J (1978) The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-analysis. Trans. Sheridan A. New
York: Norton.
Sakurai Y (2005) Women’s center as social resources in communities. In: Kawano K (ed.)
New Horizons of Women’s Mental Health. Tokyo: Commons. 140–161.
Takemura K (2003) On Love: Identity and the Politics of Desire. Tokyo: Iwanami-shoten.

Kazuko Takemura teaches critical theory (specifically feminist theory) and

Anglophone literature at Ochanomizu University in Tokyo, Japan. She is the
author of books: On Love: Identity and the Politics of Desire and Feminism and a
number of articles; and the editor of ‘‘Post’’-Feminism, Regime of Desire and
Violence, and others. Her current work focuses on violence and what can be called
post-human desire, reexamining psychoanalytical concepts. She translated Judith
Butler’s Gender Trouble, Antigome’s Claim, Excitable Speech, Trinh T. Minh-ha’s
Woman, Native, Other, and many others.