Psychotherapeutic transference

Transference is a phenomenon in psychology characterized by unconscious redirection of feelings of one person to another. For instance, one could mistrust somebody who resembles an ex-spouse in manners, voice or external appearance; or be overly compliant to someone who resembles a childhood friend.

In a therapy context, transference refers to redirection of a client's feelings from a significant person to a therapist. Counter-transference is defined as redirection of a therapist's feelings toward a client, or more generally as a therapist's emotional entanglement with a client.

Transference was first described by Freud, who acknowledged its importance for psychoanalysis for better understanding of the patient's feelings. Transference is often manifested as an erotic attraction towards or by a therapist. It's also common for people to transfer feelings from their parents to their partners (emotional incest) or to children (cross-generational entanglements).

Although transference is often characterized as a useful tool for building trust between a client and a therapist; transference can also interfere with a therapist’s ability to help a client. Some therapists become confused between clients and intimate partners.

In The Psychology of the Transference, Carl Jung states that within the transference dyad both participants typically experience a variety of opposites, and that in love and in psychological growth, the key to success is the ability to endure the tension of the opposites without abandoning the process; and that in essence it is that tension that allows one to grow and to transform.

There is, as well, an experimental new theory of tranference known as AMT (Abusive Multiple Tranference), put forth by David Bernstein, in which the abuser not only transfers negative feelings directed towards their abuser to the victim, but also transfers the power and control of their own abuser to themselves. This is often the case with murderers, for example the serial killer Carroll Cole. While his father was away in WWII, Cole's mother engaged in several extra-marital affairs, forcing Cole to watch, and later beat him to ensure that he would not alert his father. Cole would later come to murder many women which he considered "loose", and those in general who reminded him of his mother.

Transference is common. Only in a personally or socially harmful context can transference be described as a pathological issue.