How to Coach Yourself and Others Techniques For Coaching | Page 540

3.57 TRANSFERENCE INTERPRETATION
You know transference. It's that psychoanalytic concept where
feelings for one person are applied or transferred to another. It's
having irrational sympathy for a coworker who reminds you of
your sickly brother, or cowering around a boss who feels like
your domineering mother. If a current relationship is distorted
because of unfinished business from a prior relationship, it's
probably due to transference.
Don't worry, it happens all the time, even in therapy. In fact,
psychodynamic therapists look for transference because it helps
identify the skewed expectations or unmet needs in the client's
unconscious. Once the therapist identifies the transference, he
shares it with the patient in a statement called an interpretation.
According to Gabbard a transference interpretation is often
thought to be one of the most mutative interventions in
psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy. The idea is
that something from the patient's world of internal object
relations is being repeated in the here-and-now interaction with
the therapist, but the patient is unaware of it. The interpretation
of the transference situation is designed to make something
conscious that has been unconscious.
So why is this the #1 intervention?
Through the years, transference interpretation has set off more
lightbulbs than the Vegas Strip as the original "ah ha!" moment in
therapy. This co-created epiphany helps thoughts, feelings and
behaviors suddenly make sense and seem manageable.
It's not only the results, but the meticulous craftsmanship.
Somewhere in your neighborhood tonight an argument will
cause someone to utter the words, "I'm not your mother" or
"stop treating me like a child,". Affordable, mundane, not terribly
transformative. In an analyst's office downtown you'll find a

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