Abstract
Transferences from patients’ everyday lives, or extra-therapeutic transferences, provide rich material in psychoanalytic psychotherapy
practice, but the literature has mainly ignored this topic, reserving the term transference for the therapy relationship.
While references to the therapy relationship may also be present or emerge from this material, at times explicit interpretations
of extra therapeutic transferences are appropriate, without reference to the therapy relationship. Through an extensive literature
review and case illustrations from the author’s practice, this paper suggests that the concept of extra-therapeutic transference
should be revisited and integrated with a broader understanding of transference, to bring theory more in line with actual
practice.
practice, but the literature has mainly ignored this topic, reserving the term transference for the therapy relationship.
While references to the therapy relationship may also be present or emerge from this material, at times explicit interpretations
of extra therapeutic transferences are appropriate, without reference to the therapy relationship. Through an extensive literature
review and case illustrations from the author’s practice, this paper suggests that the concept of extra-therapeutic transference
should be revisited and integrated with a broader understanding of transference, to bring theory more in line with actual
practice.
- Content Type Journal Article
- Category Original Paper
- Pages 1-8
- DOI 10.1007/s10615-011-0362-1
- Authors
- Whitney Daly van Nouhuys, The Sanville Institute for Clinical Social Work and Psychotherapy, Berkeley, CA, USA
- Journal Clinical Social Work Journal
- Online ISSN 1573-3343
- Print ISSN 0091-1674