transference & projection

has anyone's T ever called them out about transference or projection? last session my T told me that I try to make the sessions about her and that I need to make them about me not her . she said I could be talking about how I get confused sometimes about her and the mother. and asked if I could consider that my thoughts may not be based in reality. she didn't use the word transference and she didn't say that what I was thinking and feeling isn't real. she was not invalidating or anything like that. I think she was offering a reason why she doesn't agree with my accusations . she has used the word projection before to describe what was going on . I don't know if I agree with any of this. I do know how I feel and what I see and in reality it all feels like I say. it is hard to see things like she says. for the most part I thought transference was when you are in love with your T or idolize him/her. or negative transference is hating your T. I don't hate her I just feel like she hates me or at least she should. at times even other strong feelings .like she wants to punish me or make me miserable . but I don't hate her at all. I have no idea how to talk to her about these things because we end out arguing about it .

I think I mentioned before that I think it's a mixture of those things for you.

But does your T really argue with you?

I don't know if it is arguing with me . like I said that I don't understand why she has changed .she will say that she has not and has always been the same person and behaved basically in the same manner . I do not agree with her . things seem to be way different .scary even at times

I had negative maternal transference with previous T. I didn't hate her - I adored her actually. I just always felt like she was playing with me and that I had to keep her happy or she would punish me. She had no idea how to deal with it - it frustrated the hell out of her and she said as much.
She ended up terminating me because she didn't feel she could help me - she couldn't resist the pressure from me to accept the projection and I had absolutely no idea what was going on. It took a good six months with T before I was even able to start seeing it.

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I could've written this a while back Granite. It's transference alright. I can remember being terrified when previous T would ask me pretty innocuous questions. I felt like I was being interrogated if she asked me how my day was going...

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Here are the three articles I wrote about transference. I am no way near completion of this subject and what I wrote so far is kind of convoluted and needs some good editing, which I will do at some point. However, it may still clarify something for you about the transference phenomena.

All in all, transference by a classic definition is not simply feelings you have for the therapist whatever they are. Those feelings in order to qualify as transference have to be a projection of your feelings toward your childhood caregivers onto your therapist. To put it simply, whenever the therapist believes you are confusing him/her with your mother/father or with whoever raised you, the therapist would call it transference.

Transference is real, but at the same time it cannot be proven at each particular moment, and so often the idea of transference is often being exploited by therapists who don't want to take responsibility for their mistakes that caused clients distress. In other words, it's easy to say "You feel this way about me because you are seeing me as your mother" instead of "I am sorry my words or actions hurt you and I can see how it happened."

And, to answer your question, yes, I confronted my therapists a lot about using transference as an excuse not to take responsibility for their behavior.

From my own experience with transference I don't entirely agree with this. Yes, I did want my T to take responsibility for her behavior, but with hindsight and almost two years worth of additional therapy I can see that I was often asking her to take responsibility for my perception of her behavior. I mean, at one point I wanted to launch myself over a table at her because she started picking at her fingernail in the same way my mother does. I can imagine she felt pretty threatened by things like this.
What I really needed her to do was stay calm - she didn't, and I do hold her accountable for that.

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I agree with JustShakey. When you're in the middle of it, it's almost impossible to sort out on your own.

I was talking about my personal experience only. When it comes to our experiences, there is nothing there to agree or to disagree about. They are what they are.

When someone describes their experience to me, I take their narrative at the face value because there is no way for me to check what really happened. When someone says they realized later that they were indeed having transference as opposed to the therapist doing something wrong, I accept it.

When I say that in my case transference was not the issue, but an excuse for the therapist not to take responsibility for their mistakes, this should be accepted it as well.

I didn't say that what happened to me always happens in therapy with everybody. I only talked about my personal experience, so it's not a matter of agreeing or disagreeing.

Yea last session T said in a typical psychotherapy way I was transferring feelings from my dad to him. I could kind of see where he was coming from but am currently working on a painting to illustrate how different the two situations are below the surface.
If I WAS transferring from my dad to him he'd know about it....and it wouldn't be pretty.

Well, the issue of taking responsibility resonates with me... There are indeed some part of what happened between me and my T that she did need to take responsibility for, but it was my transference that started the whole thing and she did admit to countertransference.
But yeah, transference/countertransference is subjective and confusing...

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Yes T has called me out. T knows I have maternal transference with her. And has confronted me about acting towards her, how I would have towards my mother. Didn't realise until she put it out there that she was actually right.
I have been trying to (unconsciously - now consciously) pull T in to a situation that I control. T won't engage in this and questions me as to why I do this behaviour.
T calling me out often makes me mad, but then when I reflect and think about it, T is often right. Which also makes me mad haha.

Does your T actually argue with you, or is that the context you have put it in? I could have said that T argued with me about a certain thing last couple of sessions, but in reality she stood her ground and I was the one trying to argue with her. While she questioned my motives and held her own ground.
Kinda like a teenager picking fights with their parents??

I have maternal transference with my T. as well. When I first told her about my strong feelings (loving like) towards her, she asked if I had heard of transference. I had looked it up. So, sometimes I feel love towards her, sometimes I think she is mad or frustrated at me and convinced she doesn't like me, sometimes I get easily mad at her and I've thought about quitting several times. One thing she said to me that was very helpful was "you're bringing me into it". She had JUST asked me some questions about my mom's apology on her deathbed. I completely felt like she was disappointed in me, mad and frustrated. As I was leaving and telling her she seemed mad at me, she said "you're bringing me into it". I thought about it all the next week and I WAS bringing her into it. All she did was ask me a few questions and it completely triggered me into feeling attacked.
Now I can almost tell when it's happening. I have to step back from the situation and see that she's NOT my mom and doesn't want to hurt me. She has pointed out several times that I keep waiting for her to hurt me, get mad, get frustrated, judge, etc. and she's right. I look for it and any little sign, I let her know.
I also went through a phase where I was convinced that she had changed. She didn't seem as compassionate, caring, interested. She told me that she hadn't changed. She asked if I saw her that way before my mom died and I said yes. She said when did it change and I said not long ago - she was pointing out that the transference was changing my perception of her.
As frustrating as it is, it gives the T. a great window into our childhoods and our processes outside of therapy. I hated every minute of the intensity of it, but I have learned SO MUCH about myself. I would say I'm now on the other end of it - it's not near as strong and I'm more aware. It will come and go for awhile from what I hear but I feel better about it.
I totally acted like a teenager with her! I recently told her the stages of transference seems like the stages of childhood and she agreed. In my teenager stage I was more rebellious (wanting to drink more, didn't care if something happened to me, etc.) and argued with her a lot. Kept telling her everything she was doing wrong. I would say now I've leveled out.