Dora and Tony Soprano: The Problem of Transference

This clip from THE SOPRANOS offers a different view on the issue of transference in psychoanalysis. As Freud writes:

What are transferences? They are new editions or facsimiles of the tendencies and phantasies which are aroused and made conscious during the progress of the analysis; but they have this peculiarity, which is characteristic for their species, that they replace some earlier person by the person of the physician. To put it another way: a whole series of psychological experiences are revived, not as belonging to the past, but as applying to the person of the physician at the present moment. Some of these transferences have a content which differs from that of their model in no respect whatever except for the substitution. These, then-- to keep to the same metaphor-- are merely new impressions or reprints. Others are more ingeniously constructed; their content has been subjected to a moderating influence-- to sublimation, as I call it-- and they may even become conscious, by cleverly taking advantage of some real peculiarity in the physician's person or circumstances and attaching themselves to that. These, then, will no longer be new impressions, but revised editions. (Dora, 106-107)

The clip of Tony telling Dr. Melfi he loves her illustrates a transference akin to that of Dora's for Freud. However, THE SOPRANOS clip reverses the gender roles of Freud and Dora, which is telling of transference. In DORA, transference seems to suggest a weakness on behalf of the hysterical patient, which is typically a woman. For Tony Soprano, however, his transference outlines the power dynamics of doctor-patient instead of male-female.