This is for all of you who are struggling with or curious about transference. I was reading Heartwounds, by Tian Dayton, and came across this part about transference (not strictly about transference on a therapist specifically, although that's the example.

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In order to stop the compulsion to continually reenact painful relationship dynamics, transferences need to be identified and worked through. ...

The essential characteristic of transference is experiencing feelings toward a person in the present that don't apply to that person, but to another person from a past relationship. It is reacting to that person in the present as if he or she were the person from the past. Ralph Greenson describes transference with a client when the client is kept waiting for a therapy appointment as follows: </font><blockquote><div id="quote"><font class="small">Quote:</font>
Transference reactions are always inappropriate. They may be so in the quality, quantity, or duration of their reaction. The transference reaction is unsuitible in its current context; but it once was an appropriate reaction to that situation. Just as ill-fitting as transference reactions are to a person in the present, they fit snugly to someone in the past. This is an example of an inappropriate reaction for a thirty-five-year-old intelligent and cultured woman, but her associations lead to a situation with this set of feelings and fantasies. She recalls her reaction as a child, waiting for her father to come to her room to kiss her goodnight. She always had to wait a few minutes because he made it a rule to kiss her younger sister goodnight first. Then she reacted by tears, anger, jealousy fantasies, precisely what she is now experiencing with me. Her reactions are appropriate for a five-year-old girl, but obviously not fitting for a thirty-five-year-old woman. The key to understanding this behavior is recognizing that it is a repetition of the past, i.e., a transference reaction. Transference reactions are essentially repetitions of a past ... relationship.... it is this fact that a piece of behavior repeats something in the past that makes it likely to be inappropriate in the present (Greenson, 1967, p. 152, 153)

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Tian goes on to explain about transferences blocking oru ability to get a clear picture of ourselves or our relationships, as we confuse people from the past with people in the present, and react based on past experience. But we can use these transferences "as indicators of where our inner work lies." When we find ourselves overreacting, or having unusually intense or inappropriate reactions, we can look to see where that is coming from. So we can use it to understand our own histories and find out what we may need to work on or change.

I'd also like to note that where it says transference reactions are inappropriate - it doesn't mean that we shouldn't have them, just that they somehow don't fit the current situation.