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This paper looks at some psycho-analytic definitions of transference and counter-transference, notes aspects of the wider application of these concepts and offers three examples from professional practice which relate to the theme.
Transference is the English translation of Freud's term Ubertragung. (Langenscheidt New Concise German Dictionary definition: ‘Assignment (of rights), delegation (of powers), transmission (radio), spreading (disease)’). Freud first saw transference as a form of resistance, later as a powerful therapeutic tool. He mentioned it initially in 1895 as a manifestation of the patient's resistance against insight, then developed in The Interpretation of Dreams (1900) the theory that transference is part of our psychic functioning by which unconscious impulses find expression in our dreams. In his clinical paper on his patient Dora (1905), he finally introduces the notion that transference is the central factor in the therapeutic process: he says that transference refers to the ‘series of psychological experiences’ which are ‘revived, not as belonging to the past, but as referring to the therapist at the present moment’. Treatment does not create transference but brings it to light. It is an ‘inevitable necessity’ in treatment, and only after the transference ‘has been resolved’ does the patient gain ‘a sense of conviction of the validity of the connections which have been constructed’ during the therapy. In his paper The Dynamics of Transference , Freud states: ‘In each individual as a result of the interaction of hereditary and environmental influences, what might be described as a stereotype plate’ is produced (or several such) ‘which is constantly repeated - constantly reprinted afresh - in the course of the person's life, so far as the external circumstances and the nature of the love objects accessible permit, and which is certainly not entirely insusceptible to change in the face of recent experiences.