****Not sure, but maybe this needs a trigger warning for mention of hypothetical anger?****

I'm not a T, so take it with a huge grain of salt, but as I understand it, transference is about reacting to someone (in this case your T), on the basis of past experiences with other people with whom you still have "unfinished business." So if someone in your past was abusive or judgemental or whatever, you'd be looking for that reaction in the present day from others (again, in this case your T) on whom you project that past experience.

An example in order to (hopefully) clarify...

Let's say that, growing up, my experience was that my mother had a lot of anger issues that she took out on me whenever she found even the slightest reason to do so, such as when I'd make a mistake. And let's further assume that I never really worked all of that out in a healthy way where I came to understand that the problem was hers, not mine.

Until I DO work that out, I'll go around expecting people to be angry with me and assuming it's my fault.

And maybe I'm at T one day and I'm talking about something I've done that I'm now thinking wasn't so smart. My automatic assumption is that T will be angry with me for what I've done. I think that because my past experience makes me believe that people will be angry with me if I make a mistake, just as my mother was. So I go looking for T to be mad, and even believing that she is when she really isn't, because that's the pattern of interaction I've transferred onto her from my unresolved past.

I do think it's a bit of a chicken-and-egg game, though. I'm not 100% sure, but sometimes it seems we actually seek out people who remind us of those people we still have unfinished business with. (Which is why I could only imagine working with an older, female T.) But sometimes it seems like we'll just see those old patterns in whomever we're with at the moment. (Which is why I'm pretty sure that I'd still have found my T to be critical or cold or angry or whatever at times, even if he was a 24 year old guy!)

I think transferrence is about the repetition compulsion at play. We keep trying to reenact past trauma as a way of working through it, hopefully by "getting it right" this time. But until we have a T or someone who gets that and can help us talk through it rather than acting it out, it's a bit of a lost cause. It's just piling more trauma on, I think.

Anyway, I've blathered on as usual. But I hope it helps a little!