The unconscious assignment to others of feelings and attitudes that were originally associated with important figures (e.g., parents, siblings) in one’s early life. The psychiatrist uses this phenomenon as a therapeutic tool to help the patient understand emotional problems and their origins. In the patient-physician relationship, the transference may be negative (hostile) or positive (affectionate).
In psychoanalysis, the patient’s tendency to transfer emotional reactions that were originally directed to his or her own parents and to redirect them toward the analyst.
A condition in which someone transfers to the psychoanalyst the characteristics belonging to a strong character from his or her past such as a parent, and reacts as if the analyst were that person.
In psychoanalysis, patient’s assignment of qualities, emotions, and attitudes of a person significant in his/her early life, usually a parent, to the therapist; used as a means of understanding and dealing with emotional conflicts.
During therapy for emotional problems and mental illnesses, the person may show an unconscious tendency to direct feelings and attitudes connected with significant persons from childhood and adolescence, particularly parents, toward persons in the present, most often the therapist. Transference can be affectionate (positive) or hostile (negative). It is a key process in psychoanalysis, the method of psychotherapy based originally on the ideas of Sigmund Freud. Since the psychoanalyst is passive, traditionally seated in a chair taking notes while the patient lies on a couch or sits in a chair and talks, the patient transfers feelings onto the psychoanalyst as he or she articulates them. Achieving insight about the transferred feelings allows the patient to make progress in self-understanding.
The process by which a patient comes to feel and act toward the therapist as though he were somebody from the patient’s past life, especially a powerful parent. The patient’s transference feelings may be of love or of hatred, but they are inappropriate to the actual person or the therapist. Countertransference is the reaction of the therapist to the patient, which is similarly based on his own past relationships.
The process of channeling emotions and thoughts that originated from early childhood encounters towards an individual in the present, typically the therapist or analyst.
The subconscious shifting of emotions from significant figures in one’s childhood, like parents, to other individuals in adulthood is known as transference. For instance, in psychotherapy, feelings of anger that a person undergoing analysis holds toward their father might be redirected onto the therapist.
In psychoanalysis, this refers to the resurgence of suppressed childhood memories and experiences, which are not relived exactly as they happened but rather in the context of the relationship with the psychoanalyst or doctor. This term is also used to describe a strong emotional bond that a patient forms with their doctor as a way to compensate for insufficient coping mechanisms in reality.