Understanding Transference

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.

Thank you for clarifying. I understood transference, but it fuzzy. This makes it easier to understand and to understand how it can be used as a tool in therapy.

I just wanted to add a couple of things. If this doesn't make sense or if it is unnecessarily complicating then just ignore it, however...

After a lot of controversy...

Some theorists are saying that it isn't necessarily that transference responses are inappropriate in the sense of being completely out of touch with present events that prompt (or trigger) them. This has arised largely in reaction to prior theorists who used to regard fairly much ALL of the clients responses as being transference based and as such they didn't look at their role in events. (Some theorists / clinicians still see things this way though fortunately it is changing now).

For example: Most people don't like to be kept waiting. Especially if the therapist is repeatedly late or keeps them waiting well into the scheduled hour. As such, some sort of annoyance / frustration / negative response would indeed be understandable given that the therapist is indeed late and given that nobody likes to be kept waiting.

That being said, sometimes the particular form of the feeling (e.g., hurt) and / or the intensity of the feeling (really very upset) can derive from the past. Even if the response is the typical response (of fairly typical intensity) of simply not being happy with being kept waiting it could still be profitable to treat it as a transference response, however, in the sense of talking about past hurts along similar lines. Since therapy is meant to be about the clients responses and reactions it could be profitable to explore this even if the therapist is making a habit of being late.

But to focus solely on the clients response and to label it 'transference' can sometimes be a way of a therapist refusing to look at their role in the events. If the client is upset because the therapist is habitually late then the therapist needs to sort out for themselves (and probably not share this with the client) why it is that they are habitually late and figure out a way to stop that happening.

Very insightful, Alexandra! Thanks for posting!

Great post, Alexandra.

I try to remember that transference is about "truth" and perception in a situation. If a therapist is late, that's a "truth" in the present so while yes, important others may have been late and transference may be in there but now, Alexandra's here-and-now appropriate, still is also there. It's like feeling two conflicting feelings at once which we all do. One can feel transference feelings and current feelings and both are valid. But the first time the therapist is late, most of any negative reaction or a reaction following a good explanation is going to be transference.

I remember when my therapist hurt her foot between sessions and couldn't walk well so didn't come out and "get me" from the waiting room as usual but called down the hall and "ordered" (my perception) me to come to her. I remember feeling she was too high and mighty, etc. to be bothered coming to get me and I was angry. I didn't know about her foot and it was very much a classic transference as my stepmother always expected me to come to her when she called me. I still do that to my husband, feel put upon that when he calls and I can't hear him I go to him but when he can't hear me he just keeps telling me he can't hear me but does nothing to "solve" that problem himself (by coming to where I am). I have to go to him :-) Even when I learned about my T's fall and hurt angle though "shame" and distress about my reaction was added to the mix, I still felt that somehow the whole thing was "her fault" and she should have come gotten me or "warned" me, etc. Totally unexpected, perception out of whack, transference reactions.

We never get "rid" of transference reactions and we have them to all sorts of people (as shown with my husband). When my T was teaching me about feelings, what they were/felt like and how to identify them, etc. she gave me the task as I left one week to think about "disappointment". The next day I got into a complicated transference thing with my husband; I expected him to unload the dishwasher and he decided to go to the race track instead :-) I said to him, "I'm disappointed you aren't going to unload the dishwasher first" and he explained to me his back was really hurting and he couldn't bend to do that without a lot of pain and he was hoping that he could distract himself from the pain by being at the race track. Well, I got into a horrendous transference mess at that moment :-) My stepmother (again) expected everything to be done right away, when it "needed" doing and always work before pleasure. And I was feeling put upon because now I was going to have to unload the dishwasher myself (who says, why can't it wait?). I had to argue with myself and ask myself good, pointed questions about what I wanted for my husband (Didn't I want him to feel better? Did I want the dishes first even if he didn't have the "excuse" :-) of a back problem? Who is in charge of making all these rules? Where'd they come from???) I managed to express feelings of true regret for his back pain and tell him by all means to go to the track and that I hoped it helped and was there anything I could do for him? But I got a run for my money thinking about transference and my lovely stepmother who, when I went to the bathroom after dinner would claim I was trying to get out of doing the dishes and would do them herself angrily and hold it against me (we're talking 2 minutes max that the dishes couldn't wait?).

Hmmm. Reminds me of an experience when I was asked 'and who does this remind you of' or 'what does this remind you of' or 'who taught you that' in response to things I was having issues with. Very interesting questions to ask yourself and see where things are coming from for you.