 This is Jory from counselingcheater.com and today I'm with Bob Cook at Manchester Institute for Psychotherapy and we're going to do a video called Transference Revisited High We did one a couple of years ago upstairs It's very popular We've got some comments about the quality of the sound so I want no comments on the quality of the sound this is a very expensive video camera It's got 11,000 hits So, it's all of those kind of misty little things, transference, isn't it? It's talked about a lot of the therapy Yeah, it's really, really important, isn't it? Because if we don't understand what transference is and counter-transference we can get into all sorts of difficulties Yeah, so what do you understand by the term transference? Well, transference is where you reach back through your past history almost like a time machine and you take from the person that's in front of you you see a person in front of you and you take a part from a part of somebody else or something else from your past and bolt it onto them So, a good example is how often you're here in society where someone meets somebody maybe it's a part of a social gathering and they say, oh, you know just like my uncle, auntie the person off TV, that's transference they're bolted on somebody else onto the person in front of them and you know, Bob, they're missing the person in front of them Because they're seeing the history What's your take on it? Yeah, I think it's definition is a fright I mean, Freud gave that definition of transference over a hundred years ago I mean, 2014, yeah He came out in his first book in his in 1896 or something I'm quite sure of the actual date but that's his definition of Freud and it's the one that stood for time and of course, Freud saw transference as one way In other words, it was always the client being in transference with the therapist Yeah, but of course from about 1940s, 50s we started to split transference up the world of transference into counter-transference and transference so those two names started to be used counter-transference and transference and the counter-transference is when the therapist transfers thoughts, feelings and beliefs onto the client so it's the reverse of what you just said and that makes up a lot of transference and the example that you gave when the person was out of the party did you say, somewhere, in a social event and they bolted on the clinical word for that is projection so we project out onto the other our historical object so that's transference and many therapists believe that change can happen without transference and if we don't have the mechanism of transference then we simply have past timing Yes, so transference is fundamentally important when we talk about the world of psychotherapy and cancer Absolutely So let's just have a look at those two words and a detailed transference is where you're sitting in front of someone and they remind you of somebody from your past so I might be silent to the client and they remind me, for the sake of this video of an old girlfriend Okay, counter transference is where I'm bringing the emotions from that past relationship with the old girlfriend into the therapy room and then projecting them onto the client so feeling as if I'm actually sat at some level with that old girlfriend That is transference and counter transference I'm seeing something of my past in the client and I'm acting out that past with my client Yeah, and the old girlfriend will probably have a flavour of your mother Right So those things that I just said and this is where we get the whole coil-in-the-face object relations goes back to the significant love objects which of course will be the major caretakers and traditionally the mother and father but of course it's significant caretakers I prefer to the name mother and father So transference goes back and back and back usually and we trace it back as well So it goes back to sometimes the roots of our upbringing and those significant people cares in our lives Now one of the things that really can be confusing when understanding transference and counter transference is the difference between that and parallel process How do you see that then? Well, I think the parallel process is where yourself and the client have been or are going through a similar stage of events So maybe say for instance I can remember moving house when I was in practice which a lot of people move house and it isn't sometimes not the easiest of things it wasn't traumatic but there was lots of things to consider and my client was moving house at the same time and it became apparent that when I was listening to my clients trying to get into my client's frame of reference trying to be empathic and form that as Bob would say, attunement I had to wonder was this my view of the trauma of moving house or was it hers? and with supervision and awareness of that and also I actually disclosed it so I'm moving house at the same time so being open about that what was your take on it Bob? Very similar, I was just thinking as you were talking about this and I'll take your viewpoint I was thinking of the back of this though why transference is useful and why we need an understanding of it and what do we do with that understanding of transference and I think two common terms I'd like to talk about which is working with the transference and stepping outside the transference and there are two different processes so working with the transference and working outside the transference let's take our idea first working with the transference so working with the transference means let me give you an example Kyle walks in and you're talking about something in the third reading process and you raise your eyebrows I'll just raise mine and the client says Bob, you know when you raise your eyebrows like that I just felt like a three-year-old in my father's study when he raised his eyebrows before he told me off So that's a really good example of transference what has happened is that the client regressed to a younger age and got in touch with the feelings, the thoughts of what it was like in that earlier replay but with the father instead and projected that onto the therapist and projected onto the therapist the therapist thought felt and paid just like the father did So that's the counter transference So you evoked an earlier scene So if you go back to the earlier scene when the father rolled his eyebrows and said, John, that is so stupid of you I am going to do this and produced a slip and starts to beat him The child then decides something about himself life in the world and usually moves into a survival mechanism survival system and may replay that with people that reminded his father in exactly the same way of raising the eyebrows and lives in fear then of that type of person and starts to withdraw starts to defend and moving away from a relationship with that type of person So his options, his flexibility his way of living becomes limited So working with the therapist sorry, my positive working with the transference would mean that you might move into the skin of that father but you play a different type of father So the transference evokes the original reaction You step into the transference and play that father figure but you play the good object instead of the bad object and give what I would call a re-corrective permitting That's interesting but in T.A. therapy terms kind of going back to the child and reconstituting the child so they can move into it Looking for the relational needs that were met not being accounted for not being seen not being validated all the really fundamental relational needs So if you step into that transference play that good object and account for the relational needs that were met so in account for the child needs their values then you are providing a different experience a different transformational experience Yeah, you're with me So that the client will get different awareness and hopefully make different decisions I think so much more just to the word of transference I'll give you an instance from my teaching practice a good few years ago now I had someone I was teaching and I was going to ask a question and they'd be quite curt with the answer and I went away and I thought I wonder if I'm just kind of being a bit rude or not doing the right thing so I thought I'd have to speak without this and I said I've noticed that every time I speak with you you're kind of quite defensive and I wonder if it's something I'm doing and she said no you remind me of my first husband which might be the father Yes, yes and I said okay and she said you just look just like him so my reaction is as I do I've got two good looking guys in the world that didn't go down too well I'll remember that for next time and it was interesting we had to work really hard at being aware of what was going on in that kind of teaching relationship and actually it worked out well because it was out in the open we knew what was going on You see that is an example of the other way of working which is the second one which is the second one which is analysing the transfers basically so instead of working with the transfers which is one I've talked about which is moving that you need to know yourself well and you need to understand yourself well otherwise you could get into a process of being merged with the client so you need to be able to know yourself well you need to be able to reflect on yourself well and you need to be able to have done this type of thing before the other type of transference is to move to an analysing transference which is keeping out of the transference so you analyse it and you look at the transference and you talk about different awareness and from that place the person may or may not get different experiences, different awareness to make different decisions so one is working with the transference and one is analysing the transference and they are different processes they may both be just as successful by the way Yes For example, the old psychoanalyst the person went on the couch the major reason why a person went on the couch was that the analyst, interestingly enough would keep out of the relationship as much as possible and make very precise, specific interpretations aimed at the right time to enable the client to have new awareness so the other thinking then was that through the new awareness someone would change Now we know that's not necessarily the case now but that was the thinking then Now by making the interpretations you're staying out of the transference was the argument I would argue that might be the case however I think that the person probably projected transference very very quickly onto the therapist, analyst who didn't work with the transference but it was seen as keeping out of the transference So they may have got the transference by default even though they were trying to step away from it it still made the crossover So one is analysing the transference the other one is stepping into the transference Sure And they're both powerful ways of doing that Sure What are the indications Bob that we're in a transferential maya sometimes I think transference can creep up on people it's not a sometimes we get mired down What do you mean by mired down? Well I think certainly when I'm working with students certainly discussion groups they might say I really dread this client coming in and I'll say ok that's ok for you to voice that let's see why that is what is it that's generating Good question That is very very simple You say to the trainee I would like you to internally ask yourself two questions when that client comes in Who is the client for you? Absolutely And the reverse question Is Who are you for the client? By asking those two questions you will grant yourself automatically and you move out of any mind If you don't do that the process of being fused what you might do out of awareness So I understand where you're coming from because without asking those questions without grounding yourself without reflecting you could end up in a transferential process unconsciously out of awareness and feel it's just stuck both of you Now I happen to believe that transference happens all the time In or out of therapy rooms So we all live with rejection and transference So why not use it? Yes, as a way of making a connection with your client As a way of making a connection and more than that make a connection and use that connection to facilitate change Yes So give me a concrete example of I know you talked a little bit about it earlier but just a concrete example of using the power of transference to facilitate a change in a client Client walks in five years of age sits over there and says what I would like to do is to be closer to people So I say Yes and he talks a story about the fact that he's never been close to people and he talks about his history and he had parents who were very distant and he never learned the ability to or didn't have a model for closeness So I take him on a therapy and as we work we start to explore that model of distance and withdrawal which was modeled on how he felt Now this is a process not an event so this won't happen in the first few sessions But as I model closeness not only by offering him a cup of tea or maybe I would say close to him but I am expressive in my nature without being withdrawn he has a different style a different model start taking on board by definition Now if I step into that transference and start acting something different from withdrawn and distant in other words giving permissions It's okay for you to be it's okay for you to feel it's okay for you to be expressive with your feelings and there's also a model for him he may start doing something different Yes Yes So acknowledging that transference but using yourself as a model for him to see something different and experience a different relationship It's kind of interesting we come from two different therapeutic models which is always an interesting topic of debate on and off camera but one of the things that Roger said was providing the soil of a different kind and I think that bridges the gap between what we do that is the common ground whether you're a person, a therapist or an analyst you're providing a different soil for growth a richer soil a soil that's embedded in That's right, so that's it a richer soil than was before Now, within all that when you go in that path you also need to go to the pain of the desolation what wasn't So in other words young man needs as he starts to experience a different soil a different model what will happen is what Richard Erskine called who's my mentor and trainer adjust the position in other words he will start or she will start getting in touch with that unmet needs the juxtaposition means the opposite so by being close by doing the very opposite things of his script he will start getting in touch with what he didn't have as he or she starts to get down that road then you can start moving towards integration we're talking about integration talking about being the whole self being the house taking ownership of the discerned part of the self so transference is a mechanism for change I hope that's useful I'll put a link to the original one the initial discussion on transference just to finish off we did have a couple of comments on the original transference video but someone commented that the idea of thinking about any kind of transference was a bit self serving and making clients in the stasis of dependency on the relationship what's your view on that my view on this I've heard this comment so often let's change the word of dependence to dependability I would want to be with a therapist that had a sense of dependability that I could depend that was consistent had a sense of predictability I would want to depend on my client I'd want my client to be consistent I sort of want my therapist to be consistent I want my therapist to have a sense of predictability so to me those are positive things as a person works through their own needs they will move on it's a bit like stages of adolescence as your needs are being met you'll move on to the next developmental stage now the whole other side of that a person gets stuck in some sort of child infantilized stage I understand that thinking but if you do a correct to tune psychotherapy where a person is attending unmet relational needs and they get met within a therapeutic process they will move on but if you need a therapist it's dependable so it's a natural process in my experience it's usually the therapist as far as dependency they are the people that are usually afraid of being overwhelmed being having their clients dependent on them and they haven't dealt with those issues so there's another topic that's probably another topic so I'm getting some transference but I can see a mug over there I'm being taken back into the early on today where I was drinking tea so on that kind of transferential bombshell thank you so much for explaining what can be a tricky concept there's always people watching