English

Noun

transference ‎(countable and uncountable, plural transferences)

1. The act of conveying from one place to another; the act of transferring or the fact of being transferred.
2. (psychology) The process by which emotions and desires, originally associated with one person, such as a parent, are unconsciously shifted to another.
   • 1974, Thomas S. Szasz, M.D., chapter 15, in The Myth of Mental Illness, ISBN 0-06-091151-4, page 253:

     Furthermore, although probably few analysts still believe
     that transference occurs only in the context of the psycho-
     analytic situation, many hold that this phenomenon pertains
     only to object relationships. I submit, however, that the char-
     acteristic features of transference can be observed in other
     situations as well, especially in the area of learned skills.⁶
     Thus, speaking a language with a foreign accent is one of the
     most striking everyday examples of transference. In the tradi-
     tional concept of transference, one person (the analysand)
     behaves toward another (the analyst) as if the latter were
     someone else, previously familiar to him; and the subject is
     usually unaware of the actual manifestations of his own trans-
     ferred behavior. In exactly the same way, persons who speak
     English (or any other language) with a foreign accent treat
     English as if it were their mother tongue; and they are usually
     unaware of the actual manifestations of their transferred be-
     havior. Such persons think of themselves as speaking unac-
     cented English: they cannot hear their own distortions of the
     language when they speak. Only when their accent is pointed
     out to them, or, better, only when they hear their recorded
     voices played back to them, do they recognize their linguistic
     transferences. These are striking parallels not only between
     the stereotyped behavioral acts due to previous habit, but also
     between the necessity for auxiliary channels of information
     outside the person's own self for recognizing the effects of
     these habits. This view of transference rests on empirical
     observations concerning the basic human tendency to general-
     ize experiences.^＊

Related terms

• transfer
• transferal

Translations

Derived terms

• counter-transference

See also

• projection
• Wikipedia article on transference in psychology