Object relations theory built upon Freud’s classical theory of human development and maturation, mapping out key milestones and processes. From this, object relations theorists have hypothesised and reconstructed what the early experiential world of the infant must have been like.4 By analysing and paying attention to how clients respond and relate to the therapist, the therapist can map out how they were responded and related to as infants. The idea that relationships with early caregivers are played out in the here and now, and in particular in the transference with a therapist, is one of the core concepts of object relations theory. Transference then is a rich and fertile field in which the therapeutic work of change can take place. He classified transference into positive and negative,3 and recognised that transference includes resistance, the erotic, the repressed and, in his understanding of the human psyche, un-discharged libidinal energies from the patient’s unconscious.
The primary task of analysis is to analyse these projections from the past that make up the transference phenomena.įreud recognised that not all transference phenomena were one and the same. In A Critical Dictionary of Psychoanalysis, transference is defined as: ‘The process by which a patient displaces on to his analyst feelings and ideas, which derive from previous figures in his life by which he relates to his analyst as though he were some former object in his life.’2 This definition covers two critical components of the early thinking on transference: that it’s the projection of early developmental relationships, and that this relationship is now being repeated in the room, with the analyst standing in for one or multiple figures from the client’s past. Therapeutic space has three fields within it: one occupied by the client, one by the therapist, and a third space that’s co-created by the therapist and client and overlaps into each of their personal spaces.1 Transference and countertransference arise in the individual spaces but inhabit and seek expression in the third space a field mutually created by both parties that’s informed by each of their personal histories – the only difference being that the therapist is trained to be aware of her field, and to utilise the insights it provides her to facilitate change for the client. Humera Quddoos explains why transference provides a rich and fertile field for therapeutic work.