Posted by pseudoname on April 5, 2006, at 14:33:22
In reply to Transference schmansference, posted by starloree on April 4, 2006, at 20:56:52
Hi, starolee, and welcome to Babble.
This is me being cranky, so my comments should be taken with salt. But...
I agree with you that transference isn't a very helpful or empowering idea. Attributing a current emotion to some other experience at some other time is distracting and demeaning. More importantly, transference theories have no real scientific basis.
There are very few people who post to this board who knock the idea of transference, but I do. I think it can lead people to narrow their view prematurely in therapy and assume connections that may not be there.
People sometimes should consider how their current responses may be similar to responses they had in childhood, but the idea of transference actually cuts that inquiry off arbitrarily by giving prejudiced authority to *some* similarities that happened to seem important (on the basis of no controlled research) to Freud 100 years ago. Other connections or insights to things that may actually be triggering or preventing emotional responses or other behavior NOW thus get disregarded.
Transference is also a vague idea, and therapists use it to mean different things. In a trivial sense, much behavior is transferential, since we learn a lot of what we do elsewhere. But even if two responses have similarities, by no means is it certain that the later one stems from the earlier one or that the causes are really the same.
It isn't even clear that we *can* understand the very subtle triggers or developmental “origins” of any emotional response. They just appear out of nowhere. That realization is itself a little scary, so maybe we'd like to think we've got them sorted out. Maybe that's part of the reason why people endorse transference so strongly. I don't know.
I've posted before against transference, but it's a minority opinion here. That can be really discouraging, so I don't want you to be discouraged, too.
I think all of your emotions are independently important and worthwhile to have. I'm glad you posted. Good luck.
poster:pseudoname
thread:628935
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20060325/msgs/629294.html