The Patient's Transference Experience of the Analyst's Gender: Projection, Factuality, Interpretation, or Construction

In this paper I reverse the more commonly posed question, how does the analyst's gender affect transference? Instead, I examine the implications of the analyst's view of the organization of transference in the analytic situation for understanding gender-salient transference formation. I suggest that the analyst's viewpoint on the organization of transference is focal in his or her conception of gender-linked transference themes. I demonstrate that even in the context of a shared theoretical outlook, variations in a one-person psychology perspective on transference entail contradictory findings. I discuss a reformulation of transference, utilizing the contribution of self psychology. It demonstrates a combined one-person, two-person psychology view applied to the organization of a two-dimensional transference. Gender-specific, object-related, and selfobject facets of the transference are codetermined by the patient's psychology and the current ongoing analyst-patient interaction. I contrast conceptualizations of gender-salient transference from within a continuum of a one-person psychology and from a combined one and two-person psychology view. I propose that a combined one- and two-person psychology view on the organization of a two-dimensional transference guides a more encompassing understanding of patients' transference experience of analysts' gender. In a clinical vignette I illustrate the application and clinical utility of this perspective.