Transference and Counter-Transference in the Classroom

Attesting to the increasing influence of psychoanalysis upon popular thinking are the technical expressions which have become part of everyday speech. One of them is the term “transference.” Some use the term to designate any attitude toward another person. Others limit its applicability to unrealistic attitudes. It would seem, according to Menninger's 27 recent succinct definition, that the term applies only to the psychoanalytic situation, but it may well be his preoccupation with technique in this particular instance that accounts for the restriction of the meaning. He defines transference as “… the unrealistic roles or identities unconsciously ascribed to a therapist by a patient in the regression of the psychoanalytic treatment and the patient's reactions to this representation derived from earlier experience.” (p. 81)

It is interesting to note that in a considerably earlier work, Menninger 26 applied the term also to the interrelationship between a student and his instructor. He gave as an example the reaction to his instructor on the part of a cadet who was counseled by Dr. Kerns. The cadet had been an excellent student, but under this instructor, he began to show an indifference to study and an attitude of resentment to correction. The young man lost no time in assuring the doctor that the trouble was not with him but with his superior who was arbitrary, mean, and unreasonable.

In the course of their talk, “… it was learned that the boy thought his father had never understood him and had been unusually severe and unreasonable. Though the boy had seriously resented such treatment at home, his attitude had been mellowed by the years that had elapsed since he left home.” Dr. Kerns pointed