Transference 

 
The transferential/countertransferential relationship

This work sheet can be worked on in class and as part of your learning statement this week
add a quote from Clarkson wherever you see [Q]
Most of us have at some time or another met a person for the first time and found ourselves
either strongly attracted or repelled by them. This can be elicited by almost anything:

Clarkson says on page 70 that “transference can be, for example, about people, places,
situations, sounds and smells”. And she continue: “the broad sense of transference is close
to original reflex conditioning or associationist paradigms”.
Any situation or stimulus that inform past experience (s), this could be because of their
personal smell, the parfum they use, the way they dress, their look, any facial expressions,
or the tone of their voice as well as places, sounds.
We can adapt to new responses and learn from it or, in the other hand, it can become a
problem to solve instead.

This strong feeling is sometimes rooted in ‘The presenting past’ also known as ‘transference’
the idea that the client reminds us of someone from our past and as such we ‘transfer’ those
feelings from the past on to the client. Clarkson believes this is ubiquitous – in every
relationship we form and therefore therapists are more likely to experience this towards
clients and to be in receipt from those they work with. [Q]

[Clarkson, P., 2003, pg 69]: “Transference is ubiquitous, natural and necessary component of
learning in most organisms”.

Therapists need to be vigilant of this, if they feel:

Anger, prejudices (positive or negative), rage, sadness, fear.

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This therefore needs to be explored in supervision, [Q]

[Clarkson, P., 2003, pg. 293]: “Supervision should take a variety of formats over a
practitioner’s professional life (…)”.

where the feeling comes from, as there is a possibility that reacting to the client as they would
a person from their past, this is known as ‘counter-transference’, this is unfair and possibly
emotionally damaging for the client.  
The main T and C/T are either negative, positive or erotic. 

The therapist’s personal history dynamically influences the experience of the client and the
therapeutic relationship. Teasing out the unresolved unconscious material impacting
transference/counter-transference is one of the primary goals in psychodynamic therapy. 

Negative [Q]

[Clarkson, P., 2003, pg 275]: “From when she was an infant she was abused by a cruel and
envious mother. (…)The mother resented her daughter even for being born at all (…)”.
When bad self-representations are brought into the therapeutic space, the
traumatized client may project that ‘badness’ onto the therapist in an attempt to destroy the
hated object. Unconscious collusion with these projections creates a malignant trap in which
the therapist becomes the abusive parent. To not succumb to these projections, the therapist
must know with conviction what belongs to the patient’s psyche and what is an elemental
aspect of her/his own personality. This task is particularly complex often because the potency
of the projections creates a range of feelings in the therapist. Furthermore, the therapist may
feel ‘wronged’ by the devaluation and unwittingly collude in the projections by acting from a
place of anger and anxiety. 
Hated object.

Positive [Q]

[Clarkson, P., 2003, pg 275]: “After many years of therapy working through rage,
abandonment, distress, neglect and release from self-disgust Trudy had incorporated and
introjected from her mother, she appeared to connect with healthy, human desire to give her
love”.
Conversely, the client idolises the therapist ‘who can do no wrong’ – this adoration is played
out in the relationship being detrimental to the work.  The therapist may perceive this
as beneficial as this can mimic rapport and agreement to the therapeutic suggestions, whilst
hiding an adaptive response given to early caregivers –hiding the work of the omnipotent and
raging infant
‘It is an essential part of the interpretive work that it should keep in step with fluctuations
between love and hatred, between happiness and satisfaction on the one hand and
persecutory anxiety and depression on the other.’ 
Melanie Klein  
Therapist “can do no wrong”.

Erotic [Q]

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Erotic transference is any transference in which the client’s fantasies about the counsellor
contain elements are reverential, romantic, intimate, sensual, or sexual. Freud believed this
occurs when the client discloses feeling of love for the counsellor.
Form of love, adoration for the therapist.
The term erotic transference is generally reserved for positive transferences accompanied by
sexual fantasies that the client understands to be unrealistic. This transference does not
interfere with the client’s goal to gain insight and mature attachments.
Eroticized transference is an intense, vivid, irrational erotic preoccupation with the therapist
characterized by overt, seemingly egosyntonic demands for love and sexual fulfilment. The
patient is unable to focus on developing appropriate insights and attends the sessions for the
opportunity to be close to the therapist, with the hope that the therapist will reciprocate love.
Although the counsellor may have read about sexualized transference, he or she may be
tempted to deny its power when working with a patient because of a lack of confidence
ability to manage or because a belief that others will see this identification of sexualized
transference as clinically inaccurate or based on their own narcissism.
Although the feelings evoked may feel viscerally sexual the client is looking for sensual love
that was absent as a child – of course the counsellor may also be maladaptive here reacting to
that desire for love with their own misplaced need. This eroticism can be enacted in same sex
therapeutic relationships.
 
Reactive Countertransference [Q]
[Clarkson, P., 2003, pg 94]: (…) “it describes primarily a response elicited and in answer to
the patient’s expressed or unconscious needs”.
Therapist reacts to the clients’ needs, fulfilling it.
The response of the counsellor, which is induced by the client – this specifically resembles
the object relations of the clients historical past [parts of a person such as breast or actual
persons such as mother, father]. The counsellor may experience and feel emotions, fantasies
and behaviours such as projective identification. The counsellor responds in answer to the
client’s unexpressed needs- at times the client may not be aware of this need as accurately as
they can this may feel confusing at times or overwhelming as the clients emotions and needs
may be pre verbal as they come from a primitive developmental stage of life.
What do preverbal emotions look like? Pain? Hunger? Rage? Abandonment? Yearning?
Choose 2 emotions and depict here.

Rage: irritation, fiddling, low temper,

Pain: face contractions, shrinked shoulders, curved body (C shape),

Complementary reactive countertransference [Q]

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[Clarkson, P., 2003, pg.95]; “…would complete or be complementary to the real or fantasised
projection of the patient’s historical past selves, ego states or historical epochs or the
partner’s -the caretaker’s or parent’s – regressive states”.
This transference completes or complements the clients real or fantasised historical past
selves.

What does Clarkson mean by her use of Aeolian harp response?

It is like a mirror to the clients’ feelings, a kind of attunement that the client tries to evoke
from the therapist.

Example: “-Can I have chocolate for breakfast, mommy?”

“- No.”

Concordant reactive countertransference [Q]

[Clarkson, P., 2003, pg.95]: “This is the countertransference that seeks identification,
confluence inGestalt, empathy, fellow feelings, resonance or empathic attunement or its
variants in the other”.
This is strongly influence by what the client is eliciting in the therapist, beyond the empathy
we may feel is a flooding, both emotional and visceral, these feelings do not belong to
us. There is an over identification, the therapist identifies with the clients id on the basis of
his or her own id, suddenly overeating for instance after a session or with the clients superego
on the basis of his or her own superego leaving the
session feeling punitive. Here there is a risk of
enmeshment and collusion a blurring of boundaries.
Beyond empathy, feelings that are not felt as our own.

Complementary proactive
countertransference [Q]
[Clarkson, P., 2003, pg96]: “in other words, the
psychotherapist responds or reacts to the client, not based on the client’s reality, but on the
therapist’s own past, which they are projecting onto the client”.
Here the counsellor complements [emphasises] the client real or fantasised projections and
responds - not on the client’s reality but on their own. The client having “put them into” the
counsellor - stirs up or evokes the id, ego or superego responses within the counsellor from
their own internalised caregiving – ‘the responses the therapist received are then given back
to the client’. v Almost an over identification.

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Give some examples here:

Perhaps if the client achieves an important task, a promotion for example, therapist could
become overly proud?

Concordant proactive countertransference [Q]

[Clarkson, P., 2003, pg 96]: “It is kind of identification, but a false one, drawing from the
therapist’s unresolved issues”.
Here the counsellor responds by imagining they are meeting the client’s needs but in fact are
replicating their past – identifying their own unresolved issues.

Clarkson explores further transference issues such as ‘couch smart’ clients [and possibly
those in training] who ‘hover above the text book’ and see the therapy as little more than a
collaborative approach to help with issues rather than a relationship with the emphasis on
intimacy. Failures to address the transference within the relationship run the risk of rupturing
the working alliance to the extent that the client will try to emotionally harm the counsellor
for the unmet and unrecognised need.
However the counsellor in training who is willing can use a variety of reflections to illicit a
deeper relationship with the client.

Give some examples here that you could use:

Co: How do you feel as you say that to me?

Co: How do you feel about getting/being like that here with me?

Co: How do you feel about me/working with me?

Co: What do you think when I say that?

Co:

Co:

Co:

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 Co:

Bibliography

Clarkson P., The therapeutic relationship, 2003

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