Transference is most often thought of in terms of romantic or sexual feelings, but it can involve nearly any emotion, from anger and hatred to admiration and dependence—anything you feel or have felt toward a significant other.
Now, knowing if you're experiencing transference versus real love is determined based on whether you feel an obsessive attraction not based on any real merit — meaning the person is not really a good mutual friend to you, but your unconscious mind is forcing you to see them that way regardless.
When a client falls in love with a therapist it is likely to be 'transference': the predisposition we all have to transfer onto people in the present experiences and related emotions and unmet longings associated with people from our past.
Transference is often (though not always) the culprit when you feel triggered, emotionally hurt, or misunderstood in a therapy session. One tell-tale sign of transference is when your feelings or reactions seem bigger than they should be. You don't just feel frustrated, you feel enraged.
But one form of transference that I want to talk about today is a type of transference I have seen many times in couples counseling. It occurs when one partner is attracted to a mate because they resemble an important figure from their childhood – usually a parent, although not exclusively.
The appropriate response to erotic transference often is to address the recent behavior in therapy without connecting it to early life experiences. This is because bringing behavior to conscious awareness without interpretation can help to minimize the risk of further “flirting” or other acting out.
All well trained therapists are aware of transference and countertransference and should be comfortable bringing the dynamics up, when they sense that there is some form of transference happening.
Transference is when someone redirects their feelings about one person onto someone else. During a therapy session, it usually refers to a person transferring their feelings about someone else onto their therapist.
Transference occurs when a person redirects their feelings from previous relationships onto their current relationship. Projection is a defence mechanism used to externalise accepted or unacceptable feelings or thoughts onto someone else or an object.
This transfer is due to the unconscious inferences drawn from previous experiences with similar individuals. Our working doctors' definitions above are therefore not merely transference, but a form of affective empathy, closer to 'emotional resonance' or 'emotional contagion'.
Love evokes fond feelings and actions toward the other person, particularly. Attachment is driven by how you feel about yourself with the degree of permanence and safety someone gives you, based on your past relationships. In other words, with love, your person is “the one” you have feelings for.
To end a transference pattern, one can try to actively separate the person from the template by looking for differences. Transference reactions usually point to a deeper issue or unfinished business from the past.
A person's social relationships and mental health may be affected by transference, as transference can lead to harmful patterns of thinking and behavior.
But there is also a distinct concept of projection—also associated with Freud and psychoanalysis—that means attributing one's own characteristics or feelings to another person. In transference, one's past feelings toward someone else are felt toward a different person in the present.
It's as if a destructive force appears to intrude repeatedly into the relationship between therapist and client as the violence of the perpetrator is re-enacted by the client onto the therapist.
Transference is the redirected projection of past feelings onto someone new today who does not share them. Displacement is a self-defense mechanism where someone redirects their negative outbursts onto someone (usually a weaker target) because they are unable to do so for the true person causing them (Neubauer, 1994).
Countertransference, which occurs when a therapist transfers emotions to a person in therapy, is often a reaction to transference, a phenomenon in which the person in treatment redirects feelings for others onto the therapist.
The therapy relationship is not different. Instead, it is actually a reflection of other relationships in your life. Therefore, you will grow attached to your therapist in much the same way as you become attached to others in your life who are safe and trustworthy.
It depends on how far the attachment goes. There are professional ethics, but there is also the trust between the two. The thin line cannot be crossed, so it can make some feel uncomfortable, but I do not think it creep me out or scared. I want the trust, I need the openness to be able to help properly.
It is not “nuts” to share this with your therapist—in fact, it can actually become a significant turning point in your relationship with him. In many cases, this deepens the therapeutic work and allows you to process things on a much deeper level. There are a number of ways in which your therapist might respond.