What is the technique of transference?

Transference describes a situation where the feelings, desires, and expectations of one person are redirected and applied to another person. Most commonly, transference refers to a therapeutic setting, where a person in therapy may apply certain feelings or emotions toward the therapist.

What is an example of transference?

Transference occurs when a person redirects some of their feelings or desires for another person to an entirely different person. One example of transference is when you observe characteristics of your father in a new boss. You attribute fatherly feelings to this new boss. They can be good or bad feelings.

What is the transference theory?

Transference is a phenomenon in which one seems to direct feelings or desires related to an important figure in one’s life—such as a parent—toward someone who is not that person.

How do therapists use transference?

With positive transference, the person receiving therapy redirects positive qualities onto the therapist. They may see the therapist as caring or helpful. With negative transference, the person receiving therapy transfers negative qualities onto the therapist. For example, they may see the therapist as hostile.

What are the five techniques of psychoanalysis?

They do this through techniques such as dream analysis, free-flowing conversations, transference analysis, interpretation, and free association. With these techniques, psychoanalytic therapists attempt to help their patients gain insight into how their past experiences inform their present behavior.

What is psychological transference?

Transference is when someone redirects their feelings about one person onto someone else. During a therapy session, it usually refers to a person transferring their feelings about someone else onto their therapist.

How do therapists manage transference?

Instead of being alerted to the potential for harm, therapists often act in ways that escalate the problem. This includes disclosing their own feelings of attraction for the client, assuring the client that the feelings will pass and asserting that the feelings really are a reflection of the therapist’s qualities.

What did Freud say about transference?

Sigmund Freud held that transference plays a large role in male homosexuality. In The Ego and the Id, he claimed that eroticism between males can be an outcome of a “[psychically] non-economic” hostility, which is unconsciously subverted into love and sexual attraction.

What is Freud’s transference?

Transference, first described by Sigmund Freud, is a phenomenon in psychotherapy in which there is an unconscious redirection of feelings from one person to another. In his later writings, Freud learned that understanding the transference was an important piece of the psychotherapeutic work.

Is transference conscious or unconscious?

Transference is the unconscious redirection of a patient’s feelings, attitudes, and desires, often regarding a close personal relationship earlier in their life, onto the clinician.

What does transference look like in therapy?