Transference
Experiencing a person in the present through the template of an important earlier relationship, usually a parent, so that feelings, expectations and behaviour from then are applied to now.
What drives it
Makes a new relationship predictable by fitting it to a known one. It also gives old unfinished business a second stage: a chance to win the approval, defeat the tyrant or finally be looked after.
How it shows
Work
Reactions to bosses and authority are the richest source. The senior hire who treats the CEO as a withholding father, chasing approval and then sulking. The team member who hears every piece of feedback in the voice of a critical mother. Tells: intensity out of proportion to the actual relationship, fixed expectations that don't update ('he'll never back me'), and the same story told about every boss. Founders and CEOs draw heavy transference; staff relate to them as parents whether they like it or not.
Relationships
Partners are the main site. 'You sound just like my mother' is sometimes accurate and sometimes transference. Watch for an expectation the partner cannot shift by behaving differently, and for reactions that track the parent's habits rather than the partner's.
Self
When someone gets under your skin quickly, ask who they remind you of. Strong early liking or dislike for a near-stranger, especially one with authority over you, is often transference. So is feeling twelve years old in a room of adults.
What tells it apart
Projection: Projection attributes your own disowned trait to someone else; transference casts them in the role of a figure from your past. The question 'who does this remind you of?' usually lands for transference and draws a blank for projection.
Countertransference: Transference is what the other person brings to you; countertransference is what you feel back. Identify both: the role they cast you in, and the pull you feel to play it.
Internal working model: An internal working model is a general expectation of how close others behave; transference is tied to a specific person and is triggered by resemblance to them, such as the same age, manner or role.
A test
Ask who this person or situation reminds them of and whether the reaction would make sense towards that earlier figure; if it fits there better than here, it may be transference.
Questions to carry
- Which earlier figure does this person or situation recall for them, and where would the reaction fit better?
- Who in my life now do I keep treating like someone from before?
How strong the research is
moderate. Susan Andersen and colleagues have repeatedly shown in experiments that a new person who resembles a significant other triggers that relationship's expectations, feelings and behaviour; the clinical uses of the concept are less tested.
Where it comes from
Sigmund Freud, 1895 and 1912; Susan Andersen and colleagues, experimental work from 1990
On the family tree: Sigmund Freud
Sources
- Robert D. Stolorow and George E. Atwood, Contexts of Being: The Intersubjective Foundations of Psychological Life (1992)
- Manfred F.R. Kets de Vries, The Leader on the Couch: A Clinical Approach to Changing People and Organizations (2006)
- Nancy McWilliams, Psychoanalytic Diagnosis: Understanding Personality Structure in the Clinical Process (2nd edition) (2011)