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Article 101
July 15, 1993

Transference

Psychology Definition: "The main characteristic (of transference) is the experience of feelings to a person which do not befit that person and which actually apply to another. Essentially, a person in the present is reacted to as though he were a person in the past. Transference is a repetition, a new edition of an old object relationship.... The person reacting with transference feelings is in the main unaware of the distortion."¹

Metapsychology Definition: Transference is reacting to a person in the present as though he or she were a person in one's past.

Because we use very structured techniques and strict rules in facilitation, transference may not seem to develop in or affect the facilitator/viewer relationship, but it can do so. From other facilitators and technical directors, and from personal observation, it has become clear to me that transference reactions in viewing are exceedingly common. I think it important, therefore, that we pay attention to transference and explore the area thoroughly. Moreover, we need a program to deal with transference when it arises in a viewer/facilitator relationship.

Most of us can think of glaring examples of transference (in the sense of the metapsychology definition given above) which occur when a person is triggered into an unresolved traumatic incident. For example, a husband and wife are having an argument about the house. The wife has an unresolved traumatic incident in which she was beaten by her father for leaving her clothing on the floor. The husband begins to shout about her clothing and thus restimulates this past traumatic incident. She curls up in a fetal position, crying: "Please don't hit me!" In this situation, it is clear that she is reacting to her husband as though he were her father.

Most transference reactions are quite subtle, however, and have much more to do with core issues and identity problems than with past traumatic incidents. I quote Greenson again:

"Transference reactions occur in all patients undergoing psychotherapy." (ibid, p. 151)

and

"Transference occurs in analysis and outside of analysis, in neurotics, psychotics, and in healthy people. All human relations contain a mixture of realistic and transference reactions."

Transference becomes a particularly sensitive issue if you have a dual relationship with your viewer. By "dual relationship", I mean any type of relationship other than a facilitator/viewer relationship. Because, as facilitators, we can't always completely avoid social relationships with our viewers, and because we occasionally facilitate for friends and family members, it is likely we will have viewers who experience transference reactions towards us. Therefore, we need ways of recognizing and handling such reactions.

Transference reactions can also develop during the course of facilitation even when we don't have dual relationships with our clients. If a transference does develop, it can cause the viewer to have difficulties with other relationships: with other viewers, with our partners and colleagues, and with us, after facilitation has ended. A facilitator must recognize that feelings a viewer has toward him may well be partly transferential and therefore, even after the facilitator/viewer relationship has ended, the facilitator must realize that the relationship may still not be on an even footing.

Indicators of Transference Reactions

1. Despite thorough orientation about the rules of facilitation, the viewer expresses a desire for your approval.


A viewer may express this desire by asking your opinion on things, fishing for compliments, being concerned about what she says or does in case it might upset you.
 

2. The viewer is concerned about your feelings towards her.


The viewer might ask whether you like her or mention that she is concerned that something she has said or done will cause you to dislike her. These concerns could be mentioned in or outside of session.
 

3. The viewer is overly curious about your personal life and relationships.


Assuming that the viewer is not a family member, close friend, or partner, and assuming that you have not made a habit of discussing your personal life with the viewer, this is a strong indication of transference. If you do make a habit of discussing your personal life and relationships with a viewer (obviously outside of session), you tend to encourage a transference reaction, in that the viewer may have difficulty seeing you as a facilitator in session and a "friend" outside of session. This is where dual relationships can become a problem. If the viewer sees herself as a "confidante" for the facilitator, the "viewer" identity can become blurred with the "confidante" identity, and the facilitation may not go as well.
 

4. The viewer brings innocuous comments made outside of session (by you or by others about you) into session and is either upset about them or has some sort of concern about them.


This is another example of identities becoming blurred. I had one viewer who heard a friend make a joke about my socks not matching. I laughed, not at all upset by the comment, but the comment enraged the viewer, and it took an entire session to handle the upset.
 

5. The viewer wants to be considered your friend.


If the viewer was not a friend previous to the facilitation, this is a strong indicator of transference, particularly if it is very important for the viewer to be considered your friend. I have one viewer who insists that although she is my friend, she can easily make the distinction between when I am being a facilitator and when I am being a friend. But this is not someone I consider to be a friend. We have little in common and have never socialized on our own outside of session, other than sharing a cup of coffee. I realized that she defines me as her friend primarily because of my actions and abilities as her facilitator.
 

6. The viewer expects you to be perfect and never to have any personal problems of your own.


This is one of the strongest indicators of transference. It usually means that the viewer sees the facilitator as "the perfect parent", "the perfect adult", or "the Facilitator" and cannot see that the facilitator has many identities.
 

7. The viewer treats you as a guru or an authority on life and takes anything you might say very seriously indeed.


This happens in most therapeutic situations, as well as in facilitation. It does not become a problem unless all comments or statements the facilitator makes are taken as gospel and unless the facilitator starts trying to act like an authority.

Though the fact that the viewer respects you as an authority could bode well for your business, her respectful attitude can place a large burden on your shoulders if you choose to accept this identity. My husband has an experienced viewer (she has completed the primary curriculum) who told me one day that I am extremely lucky to have found such a perfect man. I don't mean to insult my almost perfect husband, but the fact that his viewer spoke with a great deal of envy and jealousy (indicating that she thought he had no faults at all and that I didn't deserve such a wonderful man) made it clear to me that she had a powerful transference reaction toward him.
 

8. The viewer phones you excessively for advice or support about personal matters rather than bringing issues up in session, or in addition to bringing issues up in session.


This is particularly a problem if the viewer is asking you to make decisions for her.

Here are some less obvious signs of transference:
 

9. You find it hard simply to be an ordinary human being around the viewer.


If a viewer causes you to feel, between sessions, that you have to "walk on eggs" and that you cannot express your opinion on most subjects, she has probably had some kind of transference reaction toward you.
 

10. In social conversations, you feel as though you can rarely disagree with the viewer because she will be very upset if you do.


Suppose that, during an after-session social conversation, the subject of a local election arises. The viewer asks you which party you are going to vote for. You feel uncomfortable telling the viewer because you know she is voting for a different party, and you are concerned that she will be upset about it. In the absence of transference, the fact that you are voting for different political parties should be of no concern to the viewer. She should be able to see you as a separate being with many identities, some of which she likes and agrees with and others which she dislikes or disagrees with.

As a facilitator, I have no difficulty working with someone who is a strict vegetarian, despite the fact that I eat meat and that we have great philosophical differences on this point. The converse should be true: the viewer's knowledge that I am a meat eater should not influence our facilitator/viewer relationship.
 

11. The viewer notices and is concerned when you don't look your best -- comments on it and doesn't want to accept assurances that you are OK.


Here, it seems as though the viewer is trying to reverse roles with you by putting you into session.
 

12. The viewer expects you to accord her special privileges, such as making appointments at short notice, last minute cancellations without penalty, juggling your schedule to suit her. She may be jealous if another client mentions seeing you or spending any time with you.


This strongly indicates a blurring of identities. Suppose you have an extra room in your house which you occasionally rent out to viewers who are traveling from a long distance. A local viewer learns that a distant viewer is staying at your house and gets upset or jealous, despite the fact that there is no reason for the local viewer to stay at your house, since he only lives fifteen minutes away.

Cancellations at short notice and expecting privileged treatment indicates that the viewer does not take your professional identity seriously. To test whether or not you are dealing with transference, ask yourself if the viewer would behave in the same way if you were some other kind of professional, such as a physician, a lawyer, or a dentist. If not, you are probably dealing with transference.

This kind of transference is particularly important to handle because if the viewer treats you like this and you don't handle it promptly, you are likely to get upset with the viewer and mishandle her in session.
 

13. In social situations, the viewer is unable to accept you as an ordinary friend or acquaintance. Instead, she always sees you as a facilitator.


If you are at the same party and you have a bit too much to drink, such a viewer has a real problem with your behavior and will probably bring that problem into the next session. If you get divorced or end a relationship, the viewer wants reams of information on the area before she can be sure she's comfortable with it.

Problems Transference Reactions Can Cause

1. Lots of time spent in viewing handling disturbances about the facilitator.


Such disturbances can drastically reduce how much you can generally accomplish in session. Transference-based disturbances take time away from looking at the viewer's personal issues and issues about the world out of session. Facilitation is not the "real world", and shouldn't be. It should be set up as a special safe time, with a safe, well-defined relationship. If it isn't, the viewer will be unable to confront and handle her problems, issues, upsets, etc.
 

2. The facilitator feels stuck in the identity of a facilitator in social situations.


I have already mentioned this as an indicator of a transference reaction, but it can also have difficult practical consequences if your social circle contains a number of viewers, former viewers, and students or if your social contacts could all potentially become clients. When your clients keep pushing you into a "facilitator" identity, you feel a need to restrict what you say and do, and if such situations take up a large part of your life, you may well find you have little time in which to "just be yourself".
 

3. The viewer withholds information in session.


This is the most difficult problem that can be caused by a transferential relationship. The viewer ceases to look upon you as a safe person to talk to. When she begins to withhold information in session, the sessions don't go well, and the facilitator and technical director do not have the information they need to help correct the situation.
 

4. The facilitator is upset about the viewer.


The facilitator can feel offended, upset, or pressured by the viewer as a result of a transferential relationship. If the facilitator doesn't handle this charge in his own viewing, it can cause the relationship to become unsafe for the viewer. The facilitator may find he doesn't feel like going into session with this particular viewer, that his attention wanders in session, or that he feels drained after sessions with this viewer. Obviously, these reactions jeopardize the safe space and often provoke communication glitches and violations of the rules of facilitation.

Handling Transference Reactions

In fact, in psychoanalysis, the analyst was encouraged to become a "blank screen" so that the analysand could create a transference by projecting the characteristics of other important figures in his life onto the analyst. Any display of personal characteristics would discourage transference by marring the perfection of the analyst's tabula rasa.

The facilitator can be seen as interesting and efforts made to find out about the facilitator. If the viewer has enough information to satisfy curiosity about such routine questions like: "Are you married? How old are you? Do you have any children? Where are you from?", then the chances of developing a transference reaction developed are lessened. The facilitator must be careful to maintain a balance between divulging and withholding personal information and experiences. Too much information can also help create a transference reaction.

If the facilitator is able to detect potential trouble situations by paying attention to the indicators given above, then he can adjust his behavior accordingly and thus decrease the chance of a transference reaction developing or continuing. As mentioned above, you can test for the presence of transference by asking yourself whether or not the viewer is reacting to you in a manner appropriate to your current relationship or a similar professional relationship. You can also ask yourself if the viewer's reaction is appropriate to something that is going on in present time. For example, if you have just canceled an appointment with a viewer at short notice because of an emergency and the viewer is upset with you, you could reasonably conclude that the reaction is appropriate and not transferential. It would then be appropriate to apologize to the viewer for canceling and reschedule her as soon as possible. You would expect that this upset might come up in session and handle it accordingly.

On the other hand, if the viewer keeps bringing up and being upset about the same cancellation months later, or if you give a month's notice of cancellation of a regular appointment time because you are going out of the country for a conference and the viewer gets upset about it, you could conclude that the response is transferential.

A facilitator should start all facilitation relationships as professional relationships (if there is no existing prior relationship other than, perhaps, an acquaintanceship). He should make the rules of facilitation and the rules of professional practice quite clear to the viewer in advance. The facilitator should, for instance, make it clear that he is not going to accept phone calls during facilitation sessions unless there is an emergency.

Don't encourage transference by treating the viewer as a friend or confidante. Even if you like the viewer and would like to have a reciprocal friendship with her, don't initiate this relationship until the initial facilitation is finished. If the viewer invites you to a small dinner party while she is doing Stress Reduction, don't attend it. Don't go shopping or to the theater with a viewer during Stress Reduction (at least).

If a social relationship arises, it should be by mutual choice. If you don't feel comfortable with a viewer when she offers you a social relationship, decline it and, very sensitively and carefully, explain the boundaries of the professional relationship.

Don't, yourself, offer to have a social relationship with a client unless you really feel like having one, and unless you are sure that a social relationship won't damage your professional relationship with her. The professional relationship always has to come first, if there is any conflict. On the other hand, never start a social relationship with a client in order to try to enhance your professional relationship.

Suppose you are attending a metapsychology conference and a number of your viewers are there as well. Some of them are old friends, and you decide to go to a social dinner with them. One of your newer viewers is insulted because you didn't invite him and you declined his dinner invitation the week before. In this case, you would have to be very careful how you explained your position so as to keep the facilitator/viewer relationship intact.

Once a transference reaction has developed, you can begin to handle it by educating the viewer about transference reactions. I recommend doing this very rarely, and if you must do it, do it with great sensitivity. It is better to use some of the steps from the following transference TD to try to handle the reaction in session.

TD for Addressing Transference Reactions

1. Do an Unblocking on past attempts to handle case.
2. Get a list of past facilitators, therapists, gurus, teachers, important people. Do Five-Flow Disturbances or Unblocking on each responding person.
3. Use Steve Bisbey's TD called Influences² to specifically address current facilitator, past facilitators, therapists, gurus, teachers, important people.
4. Explore for what the client expected of the therapist, facilitator, etc.


Using the expectations found, do the following:
 

1. Run disturbances or Unblocking on these expectations to EP.
2. Use simple retrospection on the expectations until you find their source.
3. If no EP, handle the expectations as false data.
4. If no EP, educate outside of session.
5. Explore "What would it take for you to know facilitation is working?" Take any fixed ideas you get from this and find their source. Handle as false data or fixed ideas. Or, you can simply run the above question repetitively to EP.
6. Communication with the Facilitator (from the primary curriculum)
7. Explore: "What sort of person should I be?", "What kind of things should I do?", "What sort of things should I have?", "What sort of person shouldn't I be?", "What sort of things shouldn't I do?", "What sort of things shouldn't I have?" Again, find the fixed ideas and their sources. Handle as false data or fixed ideas. Or run important/unimportant about the items found.


Also find out from the above Exploration who else has been, done, or had those things. Run similarity/difference on that person and the facilitator. Run important/unimportant on that person.

You can also make (G) into a 6 part loop (should/shouldn't) and run it repetitively to EP.

8. Help and the Facilitator (from the primary curriculum)
9. Get a list of therapies and growth practices the person has been involved with. Run the responding items in the following two-part loop to EP:
1. What condition or problem have you encountered in [practice]?
2. How have you handled it?
10. If there are specific charged people that turn up on this TD and you are having difficulty getting rid of the charge on them, run the following as four four-part loops and one two-part loop:

1. Tell me something (person) has done to you?

What problem was he (or she) trying to solve?
Tell me something (person) hasn't said to you?
What problem was he (or she) trying to solve?
 
2. Tell me something you have done to (person)

What problem were you trying to solve?
Tell me something you haven't said to (person).
What problem were you trying to solve?
 
3. Tell me something (person) has done to others.

What problem was he (or she) trying to solve?
Tell me something (person) hasn't said to others.
What problem was he (or she) trying to solve?
 
4. Tell me something others have done to (person)?

What problem were they trying to solve?
Tell me something others haven't said to (person)?
What problem were they trying to solve?
 
5. Tell me something you have done to yourself because of (person)?

What problem were you trying to solve?
 
1. "Do I remind you of anyone?" Start with the largest responding person and do the following two-part loop:

1. "Tell me a similarity between me and _______ ."
2. "Tell me a difference between me and _______ ."


Run to EP for first person and then run on any other responding people to EP.

If the above does not produce an EP, run as a two-part loop on the same person:
 

1. "Tell me something important about _______ ."
2. "Tell me something unimportant about _______ ."
1. If the viewer continues to ask you for too much personal information, run the following two-part loop:

1. "What is it important for you to know about me?"
2. "What is it unimportant for you to know about me?"

Transference Exercises

1. Practice handling questions about your opinion or about personal issues in session -- without resorting to "I'll give you that question again" or " I'll repeat the question." Use the format of Communication Exercise 8 for this exercise. As a coach, vary the types of buttons you push to cover the following areas:
1. Viewer asks the facilitator for his opinion on a realization at the end of a procedure or session.
2. Viewer asks the facilitator for his opinion during session, in the middle of a procedure.
3. Viewer asks the facilitator for his opinion on something after session.
4. Viewer asks the facilitator about personal issues at the beginning of session.
5. Viewer asks the facilitator for his opinion about personal issues at the end of session.
2. Create a professional behavior code for yourself. List how you are going to handle financial issues, social issues, dress code, and problems that arise in these areas. Also, list the policies you will follow, governing your professional behavior. (Use the Integrity Program as a model on how to create a code, and see JOM 104 "Policies Concerning Certifications" for further guidance.)


Go over the code and policies either alone or with a partner and discuss each item. Discuss how to implement the code and policies and what difficulties might arise with current viewers when you do so. Make a plan to handle any viewers who might be upset by the change in operating practice.

3. Practice the techniques on the TD with a partner until you are comfortable with them and can easily spot their specific end point.
4. As a coach/viewer, make up a situation and present it to your partner, who is being a student/facilitator. The student must correctly spot whether or not it is a transference reaction. If it is not obvious, the student must take appropriate action to find out, e.g., by asking herself if the viewer reaction is appropriate in present time or by asking the coach/viewer supplementary questions.


The student handles all situations the coach presents until both coach and student feel comfortable that the student can reliably spot transference reactions.

Lori Beth Bisbey, S.Sc., M.A.
Center for Applied Metapsychology
East Grinstead, West Sussex, England

² JOM Article 41