Transference and Countertransference
Modified: 2024-07-25 12:57 PM CDST
-
Therapy is not an ordinary social exchange between individuals.
Instead, it is quite different.
- Consider Freud's original
psychoanalytic therapy.
- He would sit with his back to the patient
while the patient lay on the couch and free associated.
- Imagine
talking to a friend who would not answer you!
- One of the characteristics of therapy is transference, where the
patient begins transfer the feelings which emerge in therapy to the
therapist.
- So, the patient may come to like or to hate the therapist.
- In psychoanalytic therapy, such transference is expected and is a
sign of progress on the part of the patient.
- The best video example of transference that I have seen is from
the feature film, Ordinary People.
- In the climactic scene,
Timothy Hutton's character, a late adolescent whose academic career
has gone on hold since his older brother's death in a boating
accident, is talking to his analyst, played by Judd Hirsch.
- Hutton's
character begins to relive the last moments of his brother's life.
- Slowly, but surely, he begins to treat Hirsch's character like his
brother.
- At the end of the scene, he is screaming at the analyst,
"Why did you let go?", for both of the brothers were holding on to
their overturned boat in a storm, and the older brother could hold on
no longer.
- It is a powerful scene and it nicely dramatizes an extreme
instance of transference. View it HERE
- Countertransference is when the therapist, during the course of
therapy, develops positive or negative feelings toward the patient.
This too is normal during therapy.
- However, therapists must not act on
such feelings.
- To act on them is unethical. Sections 4.05 and 4.07 of
APA's Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct
state:
- 4.05 Sexual Intimacies With Current Patients or Clients.
- Psychologists do not engage in sexual intimacies with
current patients or clients.
- 4.07 Sexual Intimacies With Former Therapy Patients.
- (a) Psychologists do not engage in sexual intimacies with a
former therapy patient or client for at least two years after
cessation or termination of professional services.
Both of the principles above are designed with countertransference
in mind.
URL
Back to Chapter 16 Lectures