“Bringin’ in the sheaves:” Meditations on gathering the transference

The unanticipated appearance during psychoanalytic supervision, conducted in the Hebrew language, of the uncommon expression “gathering the transference” spoken in Hebrew—le’e‘sof et ha-transference—sparked my own desire to explore the history of the concept and its value, via the etymology of the English verbs “gather” and “harvest,” and of the Hebrew verb le’s‘sof (to gather). Antithetical meanings of the Hebrew root a‘saf, and some particulars of the biblical laws pertaining to gathering and harvesting fields, such as the “forgotten sheaf,” expose new dimensions of “gathering the transference” that are not explicit from the English term and its roots. Comparison is made to Heidegger’s concept of listening as “gathering.”