Transference: What It Is, Why It Happens, and How It Shapes Your Relationships

Have you ever met someone new, only to feel an immediate, inexplicable sense that you know them – whether for better or worse? Perhaps you’ve been consciously aware that someone new reminds you strongly of someone else you know, and you can’t help but feel like you’re transferring your feelings about the first person onto them. Whether or not it’s a conscious process, this is the concept of transference.

Transference is when thoughts or feelings we have about people we had formative relationships with, like your family while growing up, are associated with other people who are important to us as adults. It’s usually unconscious and can come in different forms.

The concept of transference is particularly relevant to psychotherapy, but it can apply to other relationships too. In this article, we’ll explain the psychological definition of transference, transference vs projection, transference in therapy and relationships, and how to work through it to see your partner as they are.

What Is Transference?

Psychologists define transference as¹:

“…a tendency in which representational aspects of important and formative relationships (such as with parents and siblings) can be both consciously experienced and/or unconsciously ascribed to other relationships”

In plain words, we take specific things about impactful relationships with others and paint our new relationships with the same brush.

This was initially coined by Freud, although the theory of transference evolved through years of contributions across early psychology¹. While it’s mainly used to describe processes in psychotherapy, in which we transfer our thoughts and feelings of an important relationship onto our therapist, there’s also plenty of support for the idea that it happens in day-to-day life².

Transference vs. Projection vs. Countertransference

While transference is transferring the experiences of one relationship onto another, projection is projecting your own internal experiences onto others.

For example, if you’re transferring the sense that your partner doesn’t actually care about you, this might be how you felt about a parent in childhood resurfacing in an adult relationship. If you’re projecting the sense that they don’t care about you, perhaps you’re dealing with your own fears that you don’t care for them or others in general as much as you think you should.

Another related term is countertransference. This is when we respond to somebody else’s transference; for example, your partner picks up on you acting distant, not knowing it’s because you think they don’t care about you, and, as a result, they decide to match your energy and become more distant too. This is how transference ends up in repeating patterns.

Transference and Attachment Styles

Given the examples above, you might be starting to see how transference plays a role in the way we repeat attachment dynamics from childhood to adulthood, and from relationship to relationship.

A study on transference and attachment confirmed that we transfer feelings about previous romantic partners onto new ones³. Participants were given two potential dating partners: one who resembled a partner from their past, and one who resembled a partner from a different participant’s past.

They found that people transferred their attachments with their previous partner onto both potential dates, but to a greater extent with the one who already resembled their past partner. The past partner resemblance also elicited greater attachment anxiety and lower attachment avoidance.

Attachment theory already posits that our internal working models carry our attachments forward from one relationship to another, but these findings show us that the characteristics of the person we’re dating are relevant – when they resemble a previous relationship, we have a stronger tendency to apply those pre-existing beliefs.

Further, the fact that new partners who resemble previous ones increase our own attachment anxiety and decrease avoidance suggests that we will quickly create attachment bonds. Attachment anxiety drives us to connect and pull partners closer, and if we’re not careful, we can attach too quickly – before we even realize that we’re repeating a pattern.

This explains how we seem to repeat the same patterns over and over – not only are our internal working models applying old attachment dynamics to new relationships, but we’re already drawn to and pre-selecting for people who might have the same attachment styles as previous partners.

Types of Transference

Transference in relationships isn’t always a bad thing. Psychologists have categorized transference as either positive, negative, or sexualized/erotic transference⁴:

Positive transference

You transfer positive aspects of previous relationships onto new ones, like a sense of safety, calm, or belonging.

Negative transference

You transfer negative aspects of previous relationships onto new ones, like mistrust, conflict, or abandonment fears.

Sexualized transference

Most often used in therapy contexts, this is when romantic or sexual feelings are transferred onto an established non-romantic relationship. In therapy, this is further divided into 2 subcategories:

• Erotic transference: the patient has sexual feelings about the therapist but understands that they’re unrealistic and can put them aside to continue therapy work unaffected.
• Eroticized transference: the patient has intense, unavoidable sexual feelings about the therapist and cannot focus on the therapeutic work. They may attend sessions just to be close to the therapist and irrationally hope that their feelings will be reciprocated.

Many people feel guilt or shame around developing feelings for their therapist, but it’s perfectly natural to feel close to someone who listens to, validates, and supports you. As long as you’re able to understand the boundaries of your therapeutic relationship and focus on your own goals, it can actually be a helpful insight in therapy. It’s okay to bring it up with your therapist – they will help you to explore those feelings without judgement.

Transference in Therapy

Transference in therapy is a normal part of the process, and therapists actually treat it as a useful thing – it gives you both insight into how your relationship patterns play out. When it’s positive transference, it also supports your therapeutic alliance – the working relationship between you.

In a study of attachment and transference in therapy, the Client Attachment to Therapist Scale (CATS) was used to investigate therapist attachment and transference⁵. Subscales in the CATS are secure, preoccupied-merger (anxious), and avoidant-fearful (avoidant). Both secure and anxious attachments to the therapist were associated with negative transference and higher levels of transference overall, while avoidant attachments to the therapist were not related to any type of transference.

This contradicted what the researchers predicted, as attachment anxiety would usually be associated with positive impressions of others, and security was expected to be associated with less transference. They suggested that a secure base enables the patients to explore their negative concepts of themselves and others.

So, it appears that our attachment styles in therapy don’t quite function the same as our attachments in everyday relationships. What about how this applies to transference?

Transference in Everyday Relationships: Why We Repeat Patterns in Relationships

We’ve already looked at how your attachment style can be transferred from one potential partner to another, but how often is transference happening in relationships in general?

It turns out, just meeting someone with similar facial features to a significant person can induce transference effects⁶. When participants in this study interacted with someone who looked like their romantic partners, they inferred things about the other person that were consistent with their partners, and were even more likely to describe themselves as more like the person they are when they’re with their partner.

This adds another layer to why we repeat the same patterns:

• Our behaviors are repeating, because we’re transferring assumptions and beliefs about our relationships, eliciting the same behavior from our partners.
• We’re drawn to partners who resemble people we’ve been with before, in appearance and personality, because transference activates attachment processes.
• When we transfer one relationship onto another, we actually see ourselves as more like the person we were, or are, in the relationship we’re transferring from.

This doesn’t have to be limited to romantic relationships – it can also happen with friends, and in the workplace.

Real Life Examples of Transference

Here’s an example of transference in friendships:

Stacey once had a very turbulent friendship – they were very close, but also had very intense arguments. This friendship was very important to her, but they went no contact a few years ago because of the emotional intensity. Since then, Stacey has learned what caused this dynamic and worked on the parts of herself that led to it. She now understands that she felt unworthy and dependent on this friendship, and she was constantly trying to prove her value.

One day, Stacey meets a new friend who shares similar traits to her old friend. Once she’s noticed these similarities, she starts to notice more and more. Old feelings of unworthiness bubble up, and Stacey finds herself enacting old behaviors that she thought she’d moved past.

The example above also shows how our cognitive biases play a role. Here, we can see that Stacey makes quick assumptions about the new friend based on the transference and similarities with the old friend, and she also shows confirmation bias – once she has these beliefs, she’s quicker to notice things that confirm them. The new friend might also have lots of differences to the old friend, but Stacey is less likely to notice and remember these.

How to Recognize and Work Through Transference

Since transference is an unconscious process, it can be difficult to recognize. You might recognize a sense of familiarity, old feelings coming to resurface, or relationship and behavioral patterns beginning to repeat.

Transference isn’t always something that needs to be “fixed” – if it isn’t causing problems for us and our relationships, there’s no reason to worry about this natural process. However, if we’re finding ourselves repeating the same negative patterns, it might be worth looking at how our attachment behaviors are transferring from each relationship to the next.

If you think you might be negatively transferring one relationship onto another, try to step back and observe things from a more objective point of view: are the similarities between the two people as pronounced as they seem to be? In what ways are they different? What feelings do they bring up for you, and how do you want to approach it differently this time?

Noticing negative transference is actually a positive thing – you now have an opportunity to break the cycles that might have been repeating for a long time. Staying consciously aware of the patterns in play and practicing emotion regulation skills can help you to manage this relationship – check your emotion regulation score here.

Conclusions

Transference is a natural process that isn’t always a hindrance to relationships and self-growth. However, negative transference can sometimes result in repeated patterns as our attachments, self-concept, and negative beliefs are imposed on new relationships.

Recognizing and understanding transference is the most important step – since this is something that we usually experience outside of our awareness, just being aware of it means we’re able to change it.

If you’re noticing intense emotions and behaviors resurfacing, practicing your emotional regulation skills can help you to manage these. Find out your current emotional regulation score with our free emotion regulation test – remember that emotion regulation is a skill that improves the more we practice it, so your score can change.

FAQs

Can transference be positive?

Yes, transference can be positive – you might impose positive beliefs and feelings about one relationship onto another. Even negative transference can be a positive thing, as it gives us an opportunity to change existing negative patterns.

Why do I keep dating people like my parents?

Transference causes us to form closer attachment bonds to people who resemble other significant people in our lives, by activating attachment anxiety and deactivating attachment avoidance. This is one mechanism by which we might date people who remind us of our parents.

What is an example of transference?

You believe your new partner is going to cheat and you find it difficult to trust them, even though they haven’t done anything to cause this response – they just remind you of a previous partner who was unfaithful. You revert back to old feelings, old behaviors, and old beliefs about yourself and your relationship. This is an example of transference.

References

1. Levy K. Psychodynamic and psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Clinical psychology: Assessment, treatment, and research. 2009:181-214.
2. Andersen SM, Przybylinski E. Experiments on transference in interpersonal relations: Implications for treatment. Psychotherapy. 2012 Sep;49(3):370.
3. Brumbaugh CC, Fraley RC. Transference and attachment: How do attachment patterns get carried forward from one relationship to the next?. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. 2006 Apr;32(4):552-60.
4. Ladson D, Welton R. Recognizing and managing erotic and eroticized transferences. Psychiatry (Edgmont). 2007 Apr;4(4):47.
5. Woodhouse SS, Schlosser LZ, Crook RE, Ligiéro DP, Gelso CJ. Client attachment to therapist: Relations to transference and client recollections of parental caregiving. Journal of Counseling Psychology. 2003 Oct;50(4):395.
6. Kraus MW, Chen S. Facial-feature resemblance elicits the transference effect. Psychological Science. 2010 Apr;21(4):518-22.