What is an example of countertransference in therapy?
However, a problematic example of countertransference might occur when a person in treatment triggers a therapist’s issues with the therapist’s own child. The person being treated, for example, might be defiant with the therapist and may transfer defiance felt toward a parent onto the therapist.
How does transference occur?
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 triggers transference?
For example, transference in therapy happens when a patient attaches anger, hostility, love, adoration, or a host of other possible feelings onto their therapist or doctor. Therapists know this can happen. They actively try to monitor for it.
When a therapist falls in love with a patient?
There is actually a term in psychoanalytic literature that refers to a patient’s feelings about his or her therapist known as transference,1 which is when feelings for a former authority figure are “transferred” onto a therapist. Falling in love with your therapist may be more common than you realize.
What is transtransference and countertransference?
Transference and countertransference are, by their nature, complex and interrelated. However, they cannot be understood solely within a model of attachment and its re-enactment. Power dynamics in interpersonal relationships also play a role.
Can transference love be used as resistance?
Freud’s insights–and later, Gill’s–that transference love may be used as resistance show how it acts as an attempt to exert control over the situation. It is an example of power-seeking, if you will.
How do you work ethically with transference?
Supervision is vital of course, and an understanding of the nature of transference is very important to working ethically with these feelings and retaining a sense of perspective in the work. So how are the feelings worked through? Accepting the feelings just as they are is huge.