You nailed it. This basically describes the concept of transference in a nutshell. It's not confined to a therapy room and to a therapist-patient relationship. Transference is a general occurance in a large number of human interactions in all kinds of relationships and situations.

It is also not confined only to those who have had adverse life expriences starting with childhood ones and on. Those who have been raised in reasonably healthy envoronments have positive transferences to others throughout their adult lives. But it's always a mixture of good and bad, painful, intense and more benign, positive. In different situations different parts of the past emerge and interfere with our perception of the present.

In therapy, at least in its current form, the intensity of those experiences is highly increased because of the unnatural settings where a natural healthy connection between two human beings cannot occur because one is put in a position of being an object of observation and analysis and is expected to spill their guts and make themselves completely vulnerable and the other one is protected by the non-disclosure and can keep all their defenses intact because their behavior will never be scrutinized in that relationship. This creates an emormous power imbalance which naturally makes transference go through the roof.