What is TRANSFER in psychology: types and examples

The transference in psychology has managed to establish itself as one of the fundamental points of the analytical process by allowing to find the biographical origin of the symptoms having been interpreted. In Psychology-Online we explain what is transference in psychology: types and examples each.

Index

1. What is psychological transfer
2. Transfer as a defense mechanism
3. Types of transference in psychology
4. Transfer examples

In Dora's case, Sigmund Freud discussed the issue of transfer. He defined it as:

Reissues, reconstructions of emotions and fantasies that were to be awakened and made conscious with the advance of the analysis, with a characteristic substitution of an earlier person for the person of the doctor.

To put it another way: a whole series of early psychic experiences are revitalized, not as past, but as a current relationship with the doctor's person.

As Celedonio Castanedo (2008) exposes, Freud mentioned that transference can involve simple or unmodified reissues of childhood experiences, or complex and sublimated reworkings. Whereas in Studies on Hysteria (1895), the issue of transference had been treated as an obstacle, while Freud manifested his intimate link with resistance, now it is characterized as the most effective auxiliary means of the psychoanalysis.

The analytic situation acquires its therapeutic possibility through transfers, but above all in those that become understandable and experiential for the patient. Thus these transfers correspond to the center of the psychoanalytic process, since the analyst will refrain from transmitting prohibitions, advice, opinions, prescriptions and personal opinions. The transference experiences can manifest themselves continuously, but they can also be rejected and repressed by the patient, thus the analyst will point out and interpret them so that their nature can be found and then dissolved by the interpretive work.

Transfer reactions can take the form of positive, negative, or ambivalent feelings, thus achieving full development in the transference neurosis. Against therapeutic intentions, resistance processes are generated, which can take various forms, for example exoactuation (living in action the transferential contents instead of interpreting, elaborating and dissolve them).

Freud proposed that every human being has a certain specificity in the exercise of his love life. This specificity determined in the way of exercising love life is for Freud the result of a summation: of innate dispositions and experiences in childhood, what which result in a specificity that is practiced in love (for example, what are the conditions of that love, what are the goals that are set in that line loving).

This results in a cliche, something that is repeated / reprinted on a regular basis throughout a lifetime. This allows us to understand the fundamental problem, that if this need or particular way of living, needing and thinking about love is not satisfied by In reality, what the person will do is be forced to overturn all those expectations on what they consider to be around love - that is, all the clichés of love towards a person who appears - in order to force that new person with whom he maintains a loving bond (partner) to somehow shape meet the needs of the cliches.

All this is related to transference because just as this specific way of loving occurs, when it is not satisfied by reality, it forces the person to fill in that place with the people he meets. It is normal in a way that this unsatisfied libidinal investiture is directed directly towards the place of the doctor (towards the figure of the doctor) during his analytic treatment. Freud said that it will depend on the real links with the doctor - if this sensation is based - for example, with that of the paternal imago or is based on the maternal imago or the brother's. Thus, it will not be the same whether the therapist is male or not (the patient says something like 'I would like it to be woman and young man »from here the transference fantasies are already present revolving around the idea of analyst).

Thus, transference, in Sigmund Freud's system, is a way of loving only that what is repeated is the selection of which are the objects that are going to be taken by that way of loving. For this reason the transfer is interesting to analyze.

• For example, a patient who has been associating well and suddenly stops. For Freud, it is necessary to indicate to him that he is thinking at that moment about an occurrence related to the therapist (for example "when you stop, it is because he is thinking about something of mine"). In that silence or pause, in the Freudian approach you have to ask - are you thinking about something?

In other psi techniques, they do not give weight to the transference as something that can be analyzed (for example, the patient refers that he is falling in love with his therapist) in these psi techniques they interrupt the treatment or end up sleeping with their patients.

For psychoanalysis, when this positive transference in its eroticized branch is installed, it is not recommended that the treatment be interrupted, but rather, it is necessary to directly analyze this transfer as a resistance. If we interrupt treatment, resistance wins.

We must remember that for Freud any element that stops the normal associative flow of the device is resistance, even if that transfer is in loving terms.

• For example, the patient says: Oh, how beautiful the analyst dressed today "or" How beautiful the analyst is today. And the moment he thinks about it and doesn't say it, that's already resistance for Freud (even if it's love).

Transfer is the best way to interrupt a treatment, because you can probably handle relatively well when a patient attacks them in the sense of a negative transference but it becomes much more complicated when a patient uses love as a form resistance. Freud thus proposes that there are two types of transference that must be differentiated:

• Positive transfer: corresponds to all the tender feelings that the patient may have towards the therapist or analyst. These at the same time are divided into two more: erotic feelings and friendly / tender feelings.
• Negative transfer: corresponds to feelings of hostility towards the analyst.

Below we will see examples of different types of transfer to see more clearly the concept and how it is applied.

Eroticized positive transfers

In a positive transference with erotic feelings, the scene offered in the following example can be presented:

A patient who came to the office and spoke and associated relatively well, suddenly the treatment no longer mattered to him (suddenly he writes to say that the next session he has to attend a wedding, and the next session says that he has no money and cannot come to avoid saying or analyzing his idea). It can also be presented in another way where resistance is very evident in the sense that eroticizing the link eliminates the analytical part (because one is not going to analyze the boyfriend or the wife). The change has to do with eroticizing the bond so that they stop working analytically and instead we start doing things as a couple.

And here you can mention examples where analysts end up sleeping or even marrying their patients - thus bringing about very serious iatrogenic issues - If they lie down, the resistance of the eroticized positive transference it worked.

Positive transfers with friendly feelings

For example, this is when patients realize that the analyst receives them, listens to them, lends their time to listen to them and they consider it as a friendly gift.

Negative transfer

Here the patients, for example, say that the analyst is a fool, that he does not want it and that he does not care. Even sometimes when they change therapist they start the new process with the new therapist saying things like 'I realized that my previous analyst did not know so much, he did not read so much, he did not understand so much »these intellectual attacks can also be elements resistance. The problem with negative transference is that, if it is not interpreted, they end in treatment interruption.

Here Freud was clear in saying that the transference is only resistance when it is negative or when it is eroticized (Only in those cases should the transfer be interpreted). Freud takes a term from Bleuler to establish a particular mark on neurotic people: ambivalence. Ambivalence is the coincidence on the one hand of negative transfers together with tender (not eroticized) positive transfers.

The great Freudian advice is that, if you as analysts see the negative transference, interpret it, and you have to do it quickly and not wait. until the next session because there may not be another session (the next session you were invited to a wedding or birthday and the next session will no longer have money).

This article is merely informative, in Psychology-Online we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.

If you want to read more articles similar to What is transference in psychology: types and examples, we recommend that you enter our category of Clinical psychology.

• Castanedo Secadas, C. (2008). Six psychotherapeutic approaches. Modern manual. Mexico.