Review: 

Transference | What it is not: 

Ok, with all that review out of the way, we will look at another thing that pops up in the lives of subjects. It is a word I'm willing to bet dollars to donuts you've heard before: Transference. 

However, even though you've heard this word before, I'm going to assume that you might not have heard it described in the psychoanalytic sense of the term. 

In the past, when I've taught about transference, I've asked students,

And every time I did this, people students said something like: Transference is when someone reminds you of someone else.   

While this may be how the word gets used by lots of people nowadays, that use of the term is (in my opinion) incorrect! It's wrong! And what I want to do now is tell you what the term transference means when someone who is a psychoanalyst (or someone who is well versed in psychoanalytic theory) uses the term. 

Transference | What it is:

a) Into someone who knows what we want them to know. 

b) Into someone who can give us what we need/want if we only convince them.  

c) Into someone who we need to approve of us, what we are doing, and why we are doing it. 

d) Or into someone who we need to hide what we are doing from because we fear their disapproval.