Lack of transference?

I see it discussed even to excess as a major thing in relation to therapy. Yet I cannot say I have ever experienced that with a therapist. I haven't mentally tried to treat a therapist as my mom, dad, significant other or any past relationships....to me a therapist is a therapist....I don't like redirect feelings of attachment I might have had for say an ex boyfriend to a therapist.

So does anyone else not really experience that sort of the thing? Also though even if I did have a lot going on with that Id almost think it would be good for the therapist to help in decreasing it.....I mean therapy isn't about admitting you're in love with your therapist and then essentially having them console you about the fact no intimate relationship will come of it every session in order to deal with 'transference' If I was having that issue I almost feel I would want the therapist to gently help me 'get over' it so we can them move on and focus on therapy for my mental problems.

So I suppose all and all this transference thing does not make much sense to me....and neither does the amount of time that gets spent on it in therapy for some.

Transference isn't a requisite of therapy and certainly doesn't happen with everyone. I'd have to say I believe that there are as many kinds of therapeutic relationships as there are people who are IN them. Because we are all different, we all experience therapy in our own way, and I don't think any of those ways are "wrong" any more than any of them are more "right" than others, we are each who we are, we need what we need, it takes as long as it takes and we're all brave in our own individual ways for doing this work.

(Oh my, where did that come from? Getting down off soapbox now.)

I wouldn't wish transference on anyone. It is extremely difficult and unwanted (for me). It makes the relationship with your T. more difficult and delicate. I didn't have any feelings for her for years and could talk freely about my issues. Once my mom died, they came on suddenly and unwanted and I've clammed up talking to her. So, it is absolutely fine to NOT have it and hopefully I'll get back to that one day!

Transference isnt necessarily about romantic feelings. It can be, say your parent favored a sibling over you, so now you feel your boss favors a coworker over you. That could be transference. You go talk to a t about it, and you FEEL the t doesnt immediately take your side - that could be transference too.

the more i read about transference, the more convinced i become that i've not really experienced it. i've said that maybe sometimes i've had minor experiences but now i'd probably argue that i haven't experienced it at all.

my t is my t. i have an emotional attachment to him because i've worked with him a long time, but i don't relate to him like i relate to a specific person. i relate to him the way i generally relate to most people :P

Yeah from what I've read it seems like it would be pretty difficult to deal with, and would complicate therapy. But I guess I also worry about therapists, doctors, mental health professionals who might abuse their position....and I worry sometimes the therapists might encourage it making it harder for that person to make sense of it....or might use it to take advantage at worst. I mean I could just see someone getting so attached, the therapist failing to adress it and then the person being devastated when finally hit by the fact no their therapist is not going to be their significant other or replace the dad they never had or whatever it is.

I know that, it was kind of hard to word what I was thinking...but I know its basically to do with any relationship where there where problems or an abrupt end to the relationship...and then you can end up sort of projecting that onto the current situation.

Also though it is possible someone could have a boss that favors a co-worker and makes it very obvious, its also very likely the therapist may not immediately take their side...but I can see with transference perhaps one more quickly jumps to that conclusion due to past experiences.

though I guess based on that at most I suppose there are some things a therapist could say I would take personally or offense to due to past experiences....but not sure that is exactly transference since it wouldn't be losing sight of the therapist being seperate from people associated with those past things, just more having a difficult time hearing it because I take it to mean something hurtful but that can happen with me misunderstanding anyone I suppose.

Hellion - the problem is, some of us (ahem i mean me ) get into problems with life because, say we have two choices: A is a job or a partner where we are or could be appreciated; B is a job or partner that does mot appreciate us, but treats us like our mother did. We choose B, time after time after time, and wonder why we are not happy. (A in the meantime has died.) We go to t, hoping if there is a next time, we wont choose another B. Transference happens as we try to get t to like us the way we always try to get the Bs to like us, but this time things dont work out - we dont get married and divorced or fired or whatever. We might start to recognize where we went wrong with A and why (this is happening to me now). So im not living happily ever after, but im not falling into the crap i used to fall into either! thanks - i was worrying in session today about whether i was doing "better" or not - i guess i am!

you don't need to have transference to do the work of therapy. i don't think this forum is at all typical of what therapy is like for most people.

What is therapy like for most people then, I wonder? I have had strong transference....it's been complex. I didn't really get the romantic type too much but more parental and also related to a past therapy experience. I think I'm working through it, but yes, it has been very painful. I feel it has been worth it for me though....at least up to this point.

Before I came on this forum, I always thought transference was just something a small percentage of therapy clients experienced rather than most or all of them. I've never experienced it that I know of. A lot of the therapy experiences I read about on here are really different than my own experiences in general, though. I have never had a therapist email me, hug me, or discuss boundaries with me. Sometimes I wonder if I'm doing it all wrong because it seems like these are big things for everyone else haha.

i think it's much more like this:
i only experienced transference the one time (with one of 5 Ts) in all my years of therapy. i also never had boundary issues with the T, there was no physical touch or emailing except once with a T. i think a lot of the folks who post on this forum are not typical at all. it doesn't mean one way of doing therapy is better than another, but i just don't believe what we see frequently on here is the average therapy client's experience. jmo.

If I have ever had transference with a therapist, and I don't really think I have, it has not been the positive kind. I have never felt love or warmth and so forth towards or from the therapist. I have not wanted the therapist to be my mother or my lover or even a friend really (I was friends with the first one - I mean the two I see now on the friend thing)

If you go on YouTube and type in "mock therapy session," or "mock counseling session," a lot of practice sessions between students come up. A lot of those are similar to what my experiences have looked like.

Kind of like this, minus some of the awkwardness.

I tend to believe there is always some transference feelings in all relationships, but it isn't always obvious or necessary to explore, or even clearly positive or negative. But there's a difference between transference feelings and a transference role. Most of what is written about on PC is the role which is a pattern of feelings that is pervasive or global and often extreme in intensity. I think the feelings, which aren't pervasive, nor fixating, nor disruptive to the reality of the relationship are far more common.

I definitely looked to my T as a father, but I didn't cast him into that role inappropriately and counter to my recognition of the reality that he wasn't. Nor did I act on those feelings contrary to his own reactions. I didn't feel driven to keep him in a "father box" of my own definition, perceiving him as an object rather than as his own person. Nor did I experience that pattern with other people in my life. That sort of reaction is unconscious and far more common for those whose psychological issues originate developmentally from very young ages (generally younger than @ 5 years old).

Both of my Ts have said that the word transference is overused and that Ts don't use it nearly as much, for example, as "we" do here on this forum.

I asked one of my Ts the other day if a T would ever encourage transference. He laughed and said "consciously or unconsciously??" His point was that Ts may unintentionally do things that encourage transference. He also said that their might, of course, be an unethical T out there who would intentionally encourage transference for their own ego, etc. Otherwise, he said that if transference is going to happen, than it will naturally occur. (Or not.)

Personally, I have seen several Ts over 30 years (since I was 7), and I have only experienced transference once. It was maternal transference with a T who couldn't continue to see me...I needed longer-term therapy and she really only did shorter-term, solution-based therapy. I missed seeing her as a T when we terminated (I don't generally like female Ts at all, but she was really helpful), but even the transference I was experiencing wasn't that strong, I guess, because I didn't feel like I needed to grieve the loss of the therapeutic relationship for very long.

If your T isn't skilled enough, they will miss it. We all do it, it is there in any room with any person. To not use transference is to miss out on vital info.

Yeah I suppose I am the person that would reject a job or relationship if it reminded me of how a certain individual treated me in the past. For instance my mom and I get along ok you could say but there are some unresolved past issues where I feel she went about things wrong....and with me if a job or relationship started reminding me of any of that I'd be outta there.

So I guess it sounds like kind of a mind trap like ending up choosing b when a is the better option in your example...simply not one I've gotten stuck in, but I do have issues with some other sort of mind trap mindsets like learned helplessness I feel like effects me like even if there is a solution or option to change something to improve things I may have hard time seeing it or not have motivation to even try....obviously I know that is not useful to me yet its not something I just snap out of.

How long have you been in therapy and how many therapists?

I've seen a couple of different therapists without feeling transference, but they were more like 'friends' than therapists.

Also, with current T, I didn't really feel much because I was numb when I first started seeing him. Was really depressed. That changed dramatically after a few months...

Transference has been intense with the last 2, who are/were psychoanalysts. I think it's necessary for self-transformation for those of us with developmental issues of the kind that Feralkittymom mentioned. Pre-oedipal issues (that would be me).

But i'm someone who agrees with the reparenting concept; some or many will disagree, but after experiencing what I've experienced, I can't see it any other way. We don't know what we don't know.