Transference in Therapy: Meaning, Types, and Examples

What is transference?

Transference is the unconscious redirection of feelings from a significant past relationship onto a new person. Sigmund Freud first described it more than a century ago, and the idea has stayed at the center of psychodynamic therapy ever since.

Outside therapy, it might look like this. A new manager’s short email leaves you feeling the way you did when your father went quiet at dinner. A partner’s late text brings back the panic you felt with an ex who used to disappear. A mentor’s praise means more to you than seems reasonable, because it is the approval you waited years for from a parent.

Transference is sometimes confused with projection. Projection means seeing your own feelings in someone else (“he’s so angry,” when the anger is yours). Transference means relating to someone as if they were a person from your past. The two often travel together, which is why the words get used loosely.

It also shows up whether or not you have a diagnosis. In one 2024 study, 24 adults with borderline personality disorder and 24 without it rated photos of strangers, some of whom resembled a person important in their lives. Both groups carried old feelings over to the look-alike faces, and the people with borderline personality disorder carried over more negative feeling.

Transference in therapy

Therapy brings transference out on purpose, more or less. You meet the same person at the same time every week. You tell them things you tell almost no one. You know little about their life. That combination leaves a lot of room for old expectations to fill in the blanks.

So you may find yourself sure your therapist is judging you, or wanting to be their favorite client, or bristling when they suggest something, the way you bristled at a parent’s advice. In psychodynamic therapy, those reactions are part of the work. Talking about them, as they happen, helps you see the relational patterns and unresolved conflicts they carry.

Both pleasant and unpleasant transference can be useful. In one study of 44 people in a psychodynamic therapy for depression, raters watching recorded sessions found that positive transference went with deeper sessions, and negative transference with rougher ones. A rough session is not a failed one. It is often the session where something important finally comes into the room.

Psychodynamic therapists are not the only ones who pay attention. Cognitive behavioral therapy has its own version: Aaron Beck described transference as a “schematic response” in the 1970s, and a 2022 paper on CBT supervision notes that CBT usually looks closely at the therapy relationship only in more complex cases.

Types of transference

Transference is usually sorted by its tone and by whose relationship it borrows from. Most people experience more than one kind, sometimes in the same week.

• Positive transference: you see your therapist as warm, wise, or safe. This can build trust and make it easier to open up.
• Negative transference: you feel anger, distrust, or a sense of being judged. It can be uncomfortable, and it is often where the most useful work happens.
• Sibling transference: the therapist starts to feel like a rival, an ally, or someone you need to impress, which can reveal how you handle competition and jealousy.
• Non-familial transference: feelings from a friendship or a past romance land on the therapist, so they feel like a trusted confidant or a former partner.
• Erotic transference: romantic or sexual feelings toward the therapist. They often carry a deeper need for acceptance or closeness.
• Idealizing transference: the therapist seems all-knowing, the one person who can fix things. It often grows from a wish for guidance and safety, and working through it helps you trust your own judgment.

Parental transference

Parental transference is the most familiar type. You relate to the therapist, or a boss, or a partner, the way you related to a mother or father. You might see your therapist as a protective parent you never quite had, or as a critical one whose approval you have to earn.

Either version tells you something. If you grew up with emotionally immature parents, you may find yourself managing your therapist’s feelings, apologizing for taking up time, or bracing for a reaction that never comes. Noticing that in a room where it is safe to talk about it is often the first step to doing it less elsewhere.

Transference and attachment

Attachment theory gives transference a plain explanation. Attachment researchers describe how babies build working models of what to expect from the people who care for them, and how those models guide the way they approach those people later. Those early expectations tend to travel with you into adult relationships, including the one with your therapist.

Your attachment style often shapes the flavor of transference:

• Anxious attachment: you may worry the therapist will lose interest or end treatment, look for reassurance, and read a short reply as rejection.
• Avoidant attachment: you may keep things light, struggle to open up, or feel uneasy about needing the therapist at all.

Neither pattern is a flaw. Each one is a way of staying safe that made sense once, and therapy is a chance to try a different way with someone who will not leave or crowd you.

Transference in relationships and everyday life

Transference is not limited to the therapy room. It runs through work, friendships, and romance, mostly unnoticed. In a city full of hierarchies, it is easy to see how an old feeling about a demanding parent can wake up around a demanding boss, or how a senior colleague’s silence can feel like a verdict.

In romantic relationships it can be harder to spot, because partners are close enough to look like the original. You might pick fights with a partner who is late because a parent once forgot to pick you up, or stay quiet about a need because speaking up used to get you in trouble. The partner is reacting to you. You are partly reacting to someone else.

Signs that transference may be part of a reaction:

• The feeling is much stronger than the situation seems to call for.
• It feels familiar, like a scene you have played before.
• Your view of a person flips fast, from wonderful to awful.
• Reassurance in the moment does not settle it.

Countertransference: the therapist’s side

Countertransference is the therapist’s own emotional reaction to a client, shaped partly by the therapist’s history. A therapist might feel protective, bored, irritated, or eager to rescue. Those reactions are normal. What matters is what the therapist does with them.

Thought through, countertransference can tell a therapist something about what a client stirs up in other people. Left unexamined, it can lead a therapist to act it out, becoming too available or too distant. In one study of fifteen therapists looking back on their training, supervision and their own therapy gave them a place to reflect on these reactions and use them well.

Transference-focused psychotherapy

Transference-focused psychotherapy (TFP) builds a whole treatment around these feelings. It is a structured, research-supported treatment for borderline and other severe personality disorders, based on psychoanalytic ideas about how early relationships live on inside us. Therapists trained in it work closely with what happens between client and therapist, in the moment.

How much to focus on transference depends on the person. A StatPearls review of psychodynamic therapy notes that transference-based work helps especially when relationships are the most complicated, and that frequent transference interventions can work against people whose relationships are already fairly steady. For many people, transference is one thread in the work rather than the center of it.

When to talk to a therapist

If the same reactions keep showing up with partners, bosses, and friends, or if feelings about your current therapist have become hard to say out loud, that is a good reason to talk with someone. You do not need a name for the pattern first. Noticing that it repeats is enough.

Psychodynamic therapy and emotion-focused therapy both work directly with feelings as they come up between you and the therapist, and other approaches can help as peers. In our practice, transference is useful information: a way to understand old relationships by noticing how they show up in a new one.

Last updated: October 2026

This blog is for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical or mental health advice. Always consult with a qualified mental health professional for personalized guidance regarding your specific situation.