Dynamics of transference and projection are nearly universally present as the therapeutic relationship deepens. While they greatly influence therapeutic outcomes, they are often poorly understood.
Related reading: Understanding Transference and Projection in Therapy
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Introduction
As mental health professionals, we pride ourselves on our ability to foster good relationships and manifest the Rogerian qualities of genuineness, empathy, and unconditional positive regard (read this article for a discussion on these essential therapist qualities). Yet, how do we do at managing dynamics that are out of conscious awareness? The phenomena of transference and projection, although solidly accepted in the analytical and psychodynamic schools of psychology in which they originated, are nevertheless complex and often misunderstood concepts in general psychotherapy. Yet some claim that projection, at least – especially in its severe form of projective identification – is the single most important phenomenon in the psychotherapeutic relationship (Ogden, 2005).
It is ever more widely understood that the client fails to achieve competence and lacks self-esteem because their decision-making process is obstructed by traumatically induced patterns of expectation. Translated, that statement means that the client’s damaging relationships with others early on have constrained their capacity to make the most of abilities and opportunities. These counterproductive “programs” for relationships are unconscious and cannot be dealt with directly, either by the therapist or the client. Eventually, however, these pathological patterns find their way into the client-therapist relationship, giving the skilful therapist the opportunity to help the client recognise and resolve them. This repetition of characteristic but self-defeating relational patterns in therapy constitutes the therapeutic transference (Basch, 1988; Holland, 2019).
Types of transference/projection patterns
Because the patterns cannot be dealt with directly, the potential for working in the transferences – the essence of psychotherapy – is actualised through the therapist’s capacity for empathy. We define that here as the ability to hear, comprehend, and use appropriately the emotional message beyond a client’s words: that is, at the level of the client’s (traumatically induced) expectations. Here we explore four types of patterns that can present in the therapy room.
Transference: Transference is a phenomenon characterised by unconscious redirection of feelings of one person to another. It refers to the way in which the client’s view of and relations with people (often caregivers) from childhood are expressed in current feelings, attitudes, and behaviours in regard to the therapist (Psychology Today, 2023; Holland, 2019).
Projection: Projection, like transference, is considered an unconscious defence mechanism whereby intolerable feelings or thoughts are externalised and attributed to others (Psychology Today, 2023; Boyle, n.d.; Holland, 2019). By attributing to or “projecting onto” others one’s unacceptable or unwanted thoughts and/or emotions, clients use projection to reduce anxiety. This occurs because the unwanted subconscious impulses and desires have been allowed expression without letting the (threatened) ego recognise them. These denied parts of oneself that are projected onto another person can be “negative” (e.g. impulses toward lust or greed) or “positive” (e.g. toward compassion or altruism) (Holland, 2019).
Projective identification: This process occurs when a person:
- Projects an unwanted or intolerable aspect of him/herself (such as, say, dependency) onto an Other, such as the therapist
- Behaves toward the Other – the therapist – in a way that generates feelings in the therapist which correspond with the projection (induction toward caretaking in the example of dependency), and then
- Unconsciously identifies and feels oneness with the Other (while being taken care of).
It serves as a defence for the person projecting: helping them to avoid painful feelings, which have been denied. It also serves as communication: a nonverbal and unconscious means of sharing experience; instead of telling the therapist about their inner world, clients engaging in projective identification get the therapist to experience it.
Countertransference: This is constituted by the therapist’s emotional reactions in response to the client’s transference and projective identifications. It can refer to a therapist’s emotional entanglement with a client generally and is not deemed “bad”. This and the other out-of-awareness phenomena (above) are “mined” by skilful therapists for the information they contain about the client’s process (Holland, 2019; Basch, 1988; Boyle, n.d.).
What they look like: Forms of transference and projective identification
The indicators of how a client was affectively traumatised appear in the form the transference takes. By determining which form of transference the client is exhibiting, the therapist is better able to search for the seed that was thwarted in the client’s development. Thus, three basic needs arise from early development: (1) to have one’s competent performance validated and approved; (2) to be protected and supported at times of stress or tension that are beyond the competence of the infant or child to manage satisfactorily; and (3) to be acknowledged by one’s kin as a fellow being. When any of these needs go significantly unmet or are somehow misunderstood, they tend to be eventually transferred to the therapist in the therapeutic relationship. Kohut referred to these types of patterns, respectively, as the mirror, idealising, and alter ego transferences (Baker and Baker, 1987; Kohut, 1977 and 1984, in Basch, 1988):
The mirror transference: Recruiting an appropriate, validating, affective response from the parents is especially critical for seeking competence in communication and in autonomous behaviour. The mirror transference demonstrates the client’s need or wish for such validation from the therapist.
The idealising transference: As human beings, we have an ongoing longing to be strengthened and protected when necessary, by being connected to an admired, powerful figure; this yearning gives rise to the idealising transference. It is a need to be united with someone that we look up to, and who can provide us with the inspiration, strength and whatever else we need to maintain ourselves when we feel frustrated, endangered, or bereft of meaning.
The alter ego transference: The alter ego transference answers a basic human need: the need to have one’s humanness, one’s kinship or sameness with others of the same species quietly acknowledged. The little boy who brings his play tools and workbench to the garage to work alongside his dad at the big workbench is an example of this, as is the little girl who dresses up in mum’s shoes or clothing. (Baker and Baker, 1987).
The therapist’s response to transference
It is important to be able to spot the various forms of transference as they occur, but even when the therapist does this, the client (and the therapeutic alliance) will still not be helped if the therapist does not know how to respond in a way that is therapeutically helpful. Basch (1988) offers five steps to take when client responses would seem to be transferential.
The steps in response to transference:
- The therapist becomes aware of the emotions awakened in her or him by the client. Initially, this is not likely to be a cognitive process, as the therapist reacts to cues in the client that signal something is different. For instance, a client who has been making great progress may come into the rooms looking washed out and sad, or angry or otherwise unhappy. It is a matter for awareness, not reflection, as the therapist tunes into feelings that come up.
- The therapist steps back, disidentifies from the affective reaction and views it more objectively.
- The therapist identifies the client’s affective state.
- The therapist establishes the significance of the client’s message.
- The therapist decides how most effectively to use what has been learned.
(Basch, 1988)
But what if there is resistance?
Being an out-of-awareness phenomenon, transference is easy to deny, or to disavow the impact of, on oneself. Note that, even if you are consummately sensitive and skilled at detecting it, clients may resist taking on board that they are doing it. Their resistance can manifest in ways such as: (1) accusing you of ignoring their real-life concerns (concentrating on the transferences in your relationship instead); (2) denying that their reactions are transferential; (3) avoiding responsibility for their patterns out of fear of autonomy; there is safety, after all, in what we know, even if our lives aren’t working well. Read this article to explore ways in which clients resist change, and how therapists can support their journey towards acceptance.
Similarly, as hard as this may be to accept, therapists can have their own forms of resistance (read this article to explore ways in which therapists may inadvertently build resistance in clients). If a therapist is overwhelmed by the “here and now” affect in the room, they may resort to focusing on historical patterns for the client. Therapists can “forget” that the purpose of looking at past unhelpful patterns is to make the present better; they get stuck in the past. They may fail to respond much to the client for fear of distorting the transference. Therapists may fail to differentiate transferential responses from non-transferential ones (e.g. if the client is irritated by something the therapist does, like arriving late, that irritation is a common reaction most non-neurotic people would have). Therapists can assume that they have the only grasp of “reality” and present their hypotheses as “fact”. Finally, therapists can be too quick to call “projection”; the client may not yet be ready/able to tolerate aspects of self that were denied and projected (Bauer & Mills, 1989).
How you can (helpfully) respond to resistance
Supervision. No surprise here; the first port of call when you sense transference (or countertransference) is supervision; this is true even before you sense resistance. The supervisor’s responses (challenges?) to you may help you to better distinguish between neurotic and non-neurotic responses of clients and between a genuine need to keep focusing, say, on historical aspects of the client’s growth versus your desire to keep away from present session affect due to unresolved issues of your own.
Your personal growth and reflection. Some schools of counselling, such as the psychodynamic therapies, insist that the counsellor must engage ongoing or at least regular periods of counselling for themselves. The heightened awareness this yields can be accelerated through regular, daily periods of stillness/reflection (such as found in meditation and/or journalling).
Active, non-defensive discussion of client perceptions. This last suggestion seems scary, indeed, but by giving the client the opportunity to actively discuss their perceptions of you – and working through them nondefensively – you convey some important messages to the client, namely that you: (1) have a solid ego and are not fazed by the client’s projections; (2) have a desire to understand the client’s intra- and interpersonal processes, and (3) are able to tolerate projections of unwanted (intolerable) aspects of the client’s self onto you. This stance communicates trust in the therapeutic process and helps the client to gradually tolerate aspects of self that were denied and projected.
Bottom line on transference: As an out-of-awareness phenomenon, it is tricky to spot, hard to acknowledge in oneself, and yet very powerful at driving things from underground when it is not recognised. Yet as significant as transference is, any serious examination of the therapeutic alliance needs to consider one more aspect of out-of-awareness relating: that of projective identification.
Projective identification
Projective identification – stronger than transference – is the phenomenon of being obedient to our client’s process. As therapists, we take on identifications projected (unconsciously) from our clients, who are requiring or commanding us to be a certain way in order for their world view to be substantiated. It works as effectively as it does (!) because, as much as we therapists have worked on ourselves, the projected material somehow resonates with us: that is, finds “an anchor” within us (Hubbard, 1997). We cannot understand projective identification without including our role in the whole process, including our countertransference. The client’s attempts to replicate unsatisfying early relationships are acknowledged as the Holy Grail of psychotherapeutic healing, so as the client attempts to replicate those relationships with the therapist, the therapeutic relationship (including how the therapist is affected by the client) is the cornerstone of therapy. Thus, we explain the principal types of projective identifications with an eye to “decoding” them.
Decoding the projective identification
Cashdan (1988) outlined four main types of projective identifications: to do with dependency, power, sexuality, and ingratiation. Hubbard (1997), working from the transpersonal psychology of Psychosynthesis, identifies a fifth: projective identifications invoking the sublime. We look at each in terms of the relational stance that the client is taking up, the consequent meta-communication, what the command or induction to the therapist is, and the implied “or else”: the deep-seated need that the projective material is attempting to meet (or defend against). As you read through the table below, focus on one of your clients.
The projective identifications commonly found in psychotherapy
| The Projective Identification | The relational stance | Meta-communication | Induction | . . . Or else . . . (The need) |
| Dependency | Helplessness | “I can’t survive” | Caretaking | “I’ll die” (Survival, self-reliance) |
| Power | Control | “You can’t survive” | Be incompetent | “I’ll leave” (Separation) |
| Sexuality | Eroticism | “I’ll make you sexually whole” | Get aroused | “You’ll be impotent/frigid” (To accept one’s sexual side”) |
| Ingratiation | Self-sacrifice | “You owe me” | Appreciate me | “I’ll leave for someone who’ll do it better” (Self-appreciation) |
| Sublime | Devotion, obeisance, worship | “Connect me; bless me; enlighten me” | Be divine, godlike | “I’ll crucify you” (Owning one’s own divinity) |
(Adapted from Cashdan, 1988; Hubbard, 1997)
Example of projective identification
A real-life example may help us understand how projective identification operates.
A sublime projective identification may not always be easy to spot, and it does not appear to be as “lethal” as some of the other projective identifications. It is about those who, unable to own their own divinity, project it onto someone chosen as the “guru” to carry their “inner gold”, as Johnson (2008) calls it, for them. The would-be disciple conveys the meta-communications: “Connect me”, “Bless me”, and “Enlighten me”. The recipient of the projection is ordered to be divine and godlike, and most certainly not “allowed” to have feet of clay.
This projective identification is illustrated well in the movie, “The Man Who Would Be King”. In it, Sean Connery plays a person who travels to a remote region of a developing country. The symbol on his pendant is the same as that held by the natives of the region, who await a king. They have been told that, when their king (who is held in tribal legend to be a demi-god) finally comes to them, he will be bearing that symbol. The natives accordingly make the Connery character into their king (translation: they project onto him their disowned divine selves). The Connery character, for his part, strives to be kingly, if not perfectly godlike, and all is well in the kingdom – for a while. The natives “know”, however, that a true king (being godlike) never bleeds (i.e., the induction to be “perfect” or “godlike”), so things fall apart one day when the king sustains a slight wound and starts bleeding. The resultant disappointment is too great for the king’s worshippers, the people of the region. They see that their “king” cannot carry their projection and – in accordance with the “or else” of this projective identification – they “crucify” him, by beheading him.
In modern-day therapy, we can hope that no physical beheadings occur in the therapy room, but the sublime projective identification is exemplified by the client who sees an aura of “enlightenment” around the therapist, who – the client is sure – has all the answers. Therapists thusly projected into feel a command to be perfect and “godlike”. When such a therapist ultimately reveals “feet of clay” in session – such as by some inadvertently offensive remark, sleepiness, or arriving late to session – the client naturally wants to “crucify” the therapist. At this juncture, the therapist can help the client see how he (the therapist) has been carrying the client’s “inner gold” (or divinity), and how the therapeutic task is for clients to reclaim their divine selves for themselves.
Transference and projection, because of their out-of-awareness nature, can be slippery: difficult to spot, with uncertainty arising on the part of both client and therapist as to whether it’s really happening, but when it is acknowledged and worked with, it can have immense healing potential for both the therapeutic alliance and the client, and perhaps for the therapist as well!
Key Takeaways
- Transference, projection, projective identification, and countertransference constitute out-of-awareness phenomena that, typically present in the therapy room, significantly affect client outcomes if they are not acknowledged and worked with skilfully.
- Mirror, idealising, and alter ego transferences develop as clients use the therapeutic relationship to meet needs that were thwarted, usually by caregivers, in early development.
- Dependency, power, sexuality, ingratiation, and the sublime are forms of projective identification, which is stronger than projection, and in which a client “commands” a therapist to behave a certain way to substantiate their (the client’s) world view.
References
- Baker, H.S., & Baker, M.N. Heinz Kohut’s self psychology: an overview. Am J Psychiatry. 1987 Jan;144(1):1-9. doi: 10.1176/ajp.144.1.1. PMID: 3541648.
- Basch, M.F. (1988). Understanding psychotherapy: The science behind the art. United States of America: Basic Books.
- Bauer, G.P., & Mills, J.A. (1989). Use of transference in the here and now: Patient and therapist resistance. Psychotherapy, 26 (1).
- Boyle, H. (n.d.) Object relations theory. Project for Psychotherapy Interventions II. New York: Appalachian State University. Retrieved on 28 February, 2013, from: http://www1.appstate.edu/~hillrw/Obj%20Relations/objectrelationswebpage.htm
- Cashdan, S. (1988). Object relations therapy: Using the relationship. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.
- Holland, K. (2019). What is transference? Healthline.com. Retrieved on 20 September, 2023, from: Transference: What It Means and How It May Be Used in Therapy (healthline.com)
- Hubbard, P. (1997). Lecture on shadow, transference, and projective identification, New Zealand Institute of Psychosynthesis. Hubbard is a teacher and founding director of the (recently closed) Institute.
- Johnson, R.A. (2008). Inner gold: Understanding psychological projection. Hawaii: Koa Books.
- Ogden, T. H. (2005). Projective identification & psychotherapeutic technique. New Jersey: Karnac.
- Psychology Today. (2023). Transference. psychologytoday.com. Retrieved on 20 September, 2023, from: Transference | Psychology Today United Kingdom