Working with Transference

Transference is the healing center of the therapeutic relationship. Not every client-therapist dyad goes there in a significant way. I think it depends in part on the purpose of therapy for a given client: if a client needs short term, largely psycho-educational and problem-solving support, transference may be minimal and insignificant, if not entirely unnecessary. It also depends on how deeply a client's attachment to their own parent(s) plays into the healing work. With that said, it takes courage and great self-awareness as a therapist to work subtly and effectively with transference.

Most of the time when I feel powerful transference in treatment I am aware of having the projection of mother onto me. It is usually the projection of a loving mother that the client needs to feel fully accepted, to move toward loving himself or herself entirely. During the bulk of transference, this projection is dynamic and very intense. Imagine the way a small child loves their mother: it's very passionate and emotionally raw, there can be elements of romance (in the broader, nonsexual sense) and desperation as well as elation and joy. These are the feelings that epic novels are made of. I believe that a lot of times when a client is experiencing transference it can feel the same way, as it is often in the early years of one's life when most attachment wounding occurs. To heal from that wounding and gain a more comprehensive, loving sense of self, one must be able to love someone in this way, someone whom they deem powerful. Ultimately, that love is a mirror. If someone they admire so much accepts that love and admiration, holds it appropriately and reflects unconditional positive regard in return, the client can eventually heal and retract the projection, being left with a more complete self-love. 

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For many therapists, including myself, it can take time to realize transference is occurring. I can usually tell by the counter-transference that I'm experiencing. My counter-transference of this sort can manifest in various ways. I can feel an urge to seem very cool and wonderful to a certain client. I can feel nervous and worried that I could easily hurt a client's feelings, so I am extra gentle and cautious. I can feel arrogant and creative, challenging the client to try art therapy directives that may push them a little more than usual. I can look forward to and/or dread our next session. Or all of the above at various times during treatment. But the type of countertransference that I'm experiencing at a given time can tell me a lot about what a client is projecting onto me. 

If I want to seem wonderful, I am probably experiencing a positive projection by a client who wants to admire someone in power the way they would ultimately like to feel about themselves. If I feel cautious and tender, the client is probably projecting a loving parent onto me while fearing that I will get angry and hurt their feelings like their own mother or father did. If I feel arrogant and creative, it is likely the client is unconsciously handing me all of their power while being themselves a powerful person who can’t yet own that power. These are a few examples that tend to be common ones for me to experience. They probably speak volumes about who I am and my own inner psychic world, but I think they also play to a theme that I’ve heard other therapists discuss regarding countertransference.

When the transference is acknowledged and worked with directly, it is all the more powerful. I also find it more ethical to work with it transparently. Particularly when a client has strong positive feelings that can be misread as romantic or sexual, it is important to work with them as what they often are: adult interpretations of that early childhood love and admiration for a parental figure. If a client refers in one way or another to strong feelings about me, I will describe those feelings as transference and thereby introduce a new phase of treatment. If a client doesn’t bring it up but I am sure they’ve been experiencing this type of transference for some time, I will introduce the idea of transference and gently suggest that this is occurring. If a client continues to deny it or not relate to it, then I leave it at that for the time being and I work with transference more indirectly.

Working directly with transference, after acknowledging it, means asking a lot of the client. I ask the client to be very honest about their feelings, hopes, dreams and fantasies as they relate to their transference. We then review, say a dream, through the lens of the client’s own inner world and their un-owned strengths, power, and beauty. We look at said dream also by noting any feelings or thoughts that arise about the client’s parent (usually mother) and process these. During this time I sit solidly in the role of a loving but boundaried figure who reflects respect for and understanding of the client’s projections and unconditional positive regard for the client’s whole person. In short, it’s a very delicate process by which a client works through the attachment wounding they experienced, resolves residual feelings toward their own parent, and takes ownership of every strength and positive aspect of self that they were previously unable to see and own. When this is said and done, a client can see and feel their own beauty and strengths much more fully and thus love themselves, often for the first time.

As an art therapist I find art directives can be a very powerful way to work with transference, whether it is openly acknowledged yet or not. Like working with a dream, I would ask a client to depict a time when they felt really seen by someone they think is powerful. If they have never felt that way I ask them to imagine what they would like that to feel like. I also find working with mirrors, literal or represented, in the artwork can be a great way to help a client experience more literally what is occurring in transference. In the broadest sense within transference, a good therapist is offering a mirror to the client: reflecting to them their unclaimed beauty and strengths as well as reflecting to them with great compassion their darkest and most wounded aspects of self. I will go into further detail about art directives in the following post. 

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