WELCOM

E
 BARRIERS IN
COUNSELLING:

TRANSFERENCE
AND
COUNTER-
TRANSFERENCE
Presented by,
KAVYA VIJAYAN
 BARRIERS IN
COUNSELLING
• Counselling and psychotherapy are
interpersonal processes that have
identifiable barriers.
• Transference, countertransference and
resistance are 3 conditions that may help or
hinder the relating process, depending on
how they are expressed and handled.
TRANSFERENCE
• The term transference refers to any feelings
expressed or felt by the client toward the
therapist, whether a rational reaction to the
personality of the therapist or a projection of
earlier attitudes and stereotypes.
TYPES OF TRANSFERENCE

Positive: A positive transference would be made by

clients when they project their feelings of affection or
dependency to the counsellor, perhaps perceiving him
or her as a loving, helpful father or mother.

Negative: Negative transference would be made by

clients when they project their feelings of hostility and
aggression.
Ambivalent authority feelings:
° The client having possibly both dependent and hostile feelings about
authority figures.
° Becomes anxious when he or she divulges personal information to
the counselor.
° The emotional material may come up too fast for him or her to handle,
resulting in anxiety and a possible breakdown of control mechanisms.
° His or her feelings may change suddenly to hostility directed toward
the counselor.
Hostile or affectional transference
° This is a persistent form of dependency which appears to give them the
most difficulty.
° The dependent client insists that the counselor take over the decisions
and self mangement.
° This dependent attitude generally shows up early in counselling
° Clients frequently do not obtain the solutions and support they seek,
hence, they become defensive.
° The resulting aggression severely tests the counselor's judgment
whether to inhibit his or her own negative feelings and maintain an
attitude of acceptance and understanding, or to react more openly with
feelings
° Another danger in dependency transference is that the client's desires
to solve his or her problem may be outweighed by wishes to prolong
the counselling.
° It is often necessary to put a "brake" on the regressive dependent type
of transference feeling early in the process, before it becomes a
persistent response.
° Rogers (1951) offers the hypothesis that a dependent transference
arises when clients feel they are being evaluated and that the
evaluation has more accuracy than their own self-estimates.
° The net effect is to decrease self-confidence and to increase
dependency.
° Feeling of affection
° The feeling is elicited largely as a function of the understanding and
accepting attitude of the counsellor.
° A client with strong needs for love and attention will often respond to
the counsellor's warmth with feelings ranging from friendly interest to
intensive erotic love.
° This development of feeling, unless recognizes becomes increasingly
more difficult to handle by both client and counsellors.
° It was this type of situation which, in the early days of formal
psychotherapy produced so many rumors of irregularities in the
conduct of therapists.
° This is another reason for counsellors to limit the build up of strong
transferences.
° These positive feelings elicited by attitude can be utilized to create
understanding of need deprivations.
Intensive transference
° Commonly found in extended psychotherapy.
° Regarded as a type of relationship which goes beyond that considered
desirable or optimal for counselling.
° As counsellors and therapists becomes cordial and emotionally warm,
the relationship bridge begins to widen and client feelings flows more
freely toward the counsellor.
° At this point, the transference relationship begins.
° Clients with strong affection or dependency needs may project these
so intensively at times that the client's perception of the counsellor is
grossly distorted.
° The counsellor develops a close personal relationship with clients, but
does not encourage or allow strong transference feelings as does the
psychotherapist.
° The resolved or broken transference relationship is a complete
emotional detatchment, with the vectors of the client’s feeling moving
away from the counsellor as a person and in the direction of investing
feeling in other mature human relationships.
° Clients, in other words, take their projection back.
° In the concluding phases of counselling or therapy, strong residual
transference feelings be discussed frankly with the client and broadly
interpreted.
° The affection felt toward the counsellor, must be generalized to
include all human beings.
° Any resentments lingering toward the counsellor must be completely
understood by the client.
° Thus, the client is not left struggling with unresolved feelings
dredged up during the counselling.
ORIGINS OF TRANSFERENCE FEELINGS.

• Transference feelings have their roots in the client's life

experiences.
• The counsellor's personal reactions to the client of his or her
institutional role arouse selective feelings in the client.
• These feelings might be very normal social reactions to what the
counsellor is, says, or does.
• The nature of relationship and the nature of the physical setting
of the counsellor's office also seems to have a pronounced effect
on the client's emotional responses to the counsellor.
• Clients need the means by which they can solve present and future
problems by themselves.
• This action requires that they experience their problems in the here
and now rather than in the past. To achieve this focus in the present,
clients must repeat the basic sentence: "Now I am aware that”.
• The use of the word “I” develops the client's sense of responsibility
for his or her feelings and thoughts.
• The word aware provides clients with a sense of their own
capacities and abilities of which they had not been aware.
° Transferences can be viewed as "being deficiencies", where clients
manipulate present relationships.
° They can learn to change these deficiencies through awareness and
living authentically in the now.
° Bugental (1965) confirms our idea that authenticity is a central quality
of being and sees transference as a process of falling away from
authentic communication with the counselor.
° A key counseling task is to help clients become aware that their
resistance to change is their defence against being authentic.
Client centred or phenomenological counselors:
• Do not look a transference situation as a significant
therapeutic problem.
• The result is that persons using this style of counselling
rarely confront intensive transferences, and they reflect them
as they would any other feeling.
° Another cause of low-intensity transference phenomena in counseling
might be the counselor's approach to a transference feeling.
° He or she does not usually try to analyse deeply the manifold ways in
which the client manipulates his or her life relationships.
° Instead the counsellor utilises reflection and acceptance techniques
such and clients to see that the transference feelings reside within the
own inadequate perception and not within the counsellor.
° Negative transferences often follow positive transference.
° When clients suddenly realize they have been idealizing or have been
depending upon the counselor, they begin to perceive the counselor as
he or she really is rather than in the client's "God-like image”.
° The counselor must help clients work through these feelings of
disillusionment, however, by "giving back” their projections.
° The situation is analogous to "Falling out of love".
° The lover in fairness to his former beloved, returns her projections of
idealized images (romantic love) so that her actualizing mechanisms
are restored to their former state.
THERAPEUTIC FUNCTIONS OF TRANSFERENCE FEELINGS
FOR COUNSELORS
° The awareness of freedom to express previously expressed irrational
feelings
° Allows the client to express distorted feelings without the usual
counter defensive responses.
° To promote client’s confidence in the counselor through wise handling
of transference feelings.
• Enable clients to become aware of the origin and significance
of those feelings in their present life through interpretation of
those feelings through which the transferred feelings, along with
their maladaptive behaviors, tend to disappear.

• This insight help them to establish more satisfying and mature

relationships with people.
WORKING THROUGH TRANSFERENCE FEELINGS AND
PREVENTING DEEP TRANSFERENCE RELATIONSHIPS.

° 1. A primary technique for resolving transference feeling is by means

of simple acceptance, as one would handle any type of client feeling.
° 2. The counsellor may ask clarifying questions regarding the forms
of anxiety which the clients seem to be manifesting.
° 3. The transference feeling in the client's statement may be reflected.
° 4. The counselor may interpret the transference feelings directly.
° 5. The counselor should focus on what is going on now in client
feelings rather than why provides a most fruitful technique for
handling the difficult problem of transference.
° 6.Calling attention to the transference.
° 7. To regard it as a form of projection.
° 8. The counsellor may also interpret the transference feeing as
expressions of “being deficiency”.
° 9. The counselor may refer the client for more extensive
psychotherapy if the relationship develops to an intensity which is
beyond his or her competence and responsibility.
TRANSFERENCE PROBLEMS IN GROUP THERAPY
° Every group member perceives the counselor incorrectly because of
transference distortions around such issues as authority, dependency, and
autonomy.
° According to Yalom (1975) there are two major approaches to
transference resolution in group therapy: consensual validation and
therapist transparency.
° The counselor, for example, may encourage a group member to
validate his or her impressions of the counselor with those of the other
group members.
° A second technique is to acknowledge one's fallibility/openly.
° The counselor shares feelings and acknowledges or refutes motives or
feelings attributed to him or her
COUNTERTRANSFERENCE
• Countertransference can be broadly included to conscious and
unconscious attitudes of the counselor toward real or
imagined client attitude or overt behaviour.
• It is the expression of the counselor's humanness.
• May be simply a feeling of the moment which is a genuine
response between two human beings
• It also may be a form of counselor projection.
• Unless counselors have an awareness of their attitudes, however, their
responses to client statements will all too frequently be tainted with
their own feelings.
• These negative attitudes tend to have a destructive effect on the
relationship by arousing negative transference feelings in the client.
• Positive countertransference’s, made by counselors, can be even more
deleterious, since they are less apt to recognize them and the client is
more upset when they are withdrawn.
Countertransference can lead to negative effects on clients such as:
• Misjudgements
• Misassessment of the background of the person (culture,
meaning of psychopathology, motivation, ego strength, age
factors).
• Pushing the client too fast or probing too deeply.
• Applying the wrong technique with a particular client out of
ignorance or unrealistic confidence
° Allowing transferences or countertransference to get out of hand add
to the possibility of a negative effect.
° Communication difficulties and inability to recognize and confront
client cognitive distortions, such as overgeneralization.
° Lack of a focal point or theme, where the counselor allows
discussion of anything or focuses too narrowly, is a factor in failure.
SOURCE OF COUNTERTRANSFERENCE
° Counselor anxiety is the prime source of countertransference
behaviors. The counseling relationship mobilizes anxiety from former
relationships in a manner similar to transference.
° The anxiety patterns in the counsellor may be classified into three
types: unresolved personal problems of the counselor, situational
pressures, and communication of the client's feeling to the counselor
by empathic means.
° Counselor's unresolved personal problems
° The main solution here is counseling for the counselor.
° Even after personal counseling, counselors must continue to increase
their self-awareness to minimize countertransference.
° Situational pressures are tied to the counselor's problems but also
may aggravate latent feelings.
° Situational pressures exist for counselors in the form of their feeling
responsibility to see that the client improves, or feeling that their
professional reputation is at stake if they fail with this client.
° As a result, counsellors try too hard by pushing the client, and thereby
may defeat their own purposes.
° Counselors must be on guard so that their anxious feelings of
frustration when a client does not improve are not transmitted to the
client.
° A third source of countertransference is communication of client
feelings to the counsellor.
° The counselor then responds empathically to minimal cues, such as
changes in posture: voice, and manner.
SIGNS OF COUNTERTRANSFERENCE FEELINGS
° 1. Getting sleepy, or not listening or paying attention, not hearing
client's messages clearly.
° 2. Denying the presence of anxiety.
° 3. Finding it difficult to shift positions or experiencing one's self
“tighten up."
° 4. Becoming sympathetic rather than empathic or becoming over-
emotional in face of client's troubles.
° 5. Selecting certain material to reflect or interpret and wondering
afterward why this material rather than some other material was selected.
° 6. Consistently reflecting or interpreting too soon or incorrectly (and the
result cannot be accounted for on client resistance grounds only).
° 7. Underestimating or missing the client's depth of feeling consistently.
° 8. Feeling an unreasoning dislike or attraction for the client. Getting
angry at the unappreciative client.
° 9. Being unable to identify with the client.
° 10. Over identifying with the client, as in becoming aggressively
sympathetic when the client cites maltreatment by an authority figure.
° 11. Discovering a tendency to argue with the client, becoming
defensive, or otherwise vulnerable to client criticism.
° 12. Feeling that this is a "best" or "worst" client.
° 13. Being preoccupied with the client in fantasy between sessions,
even to the extent of thinking of responses to be made.
° 14. Being habitually late in starting interviews or running over the
hour with certain clients.
° 15. Attempting to elicit some strong affect from the client by making
dramatic statements.
° 16. Being over concerned about confidential nature of work with
clients.
° 17. Feeling the compulsion to do something active; hence, making too
strong an impact with "shotgun" interpretations and suggestions.
° 18. Dreaming about the client.
° 19. Being too busy" to see the client or complaining of administrative
duties.
° 20. Working excessively hard with clients to point of fatigue, then
complaining of overwork
° LOCATING SOURCES OF FEELINGS.
° Counselors must accept the fact that they have varied feelings about
clients and that they will be changed somewhat by the counseling
experience
° Counselors must also be aware that they have anxieties coming from
insecurity in the counseling role and the client's expression of anxiety.
° Counselors must control their tendencies to give reassurance to the
client because of their own needs for reassurance.
° Counselors control their anxiety through the knowledge that non
psychotic clients rarely assault counselors and that hostile, threatening
language is often a clever device used by disturbed clients to frighten
counselors.
 REFERENCE

Brammer, M. L., & Shostrom,E.L. (1960).

Theraputic Psychology. USA: Prentice
Hall.INC.
THANK YOU...!!