#counter-transference

It happens sometimes during counselling.

For a variety of reasons, such as the patient being too emotionally dependent on the counselor. The patient may actually transfer a certain emotion that they experienced in the past to the counselor.

For instance, someone who never received any love from their own father in the past unconsciously sees the counselor as their father and seeks love from them.

Counter-transference is the opposite case, where a counselor projects too much of their personal emotions or experiences onto their patient.

For example, a counselor who had issues with their mother may unconsciously equate a middle-aged female patient with their own mother during treatment. 

My ceramics career has been left to making functional pots, nothing very sculptural. Obviously this choice has been made by me, but I decided to test my limits as an artist and go with it. One of our pieces has to reflect our experience with transference or counter-transference in our internship. Essentially transference is when the therapist or the client “transfer” or redirect feelings from one person to another. For instance, it would be as if a strong anger towards your friend may become redirected towards your Therapist, even though they didn’t do anything wrong. In a therapeutic setting, the transference happens between the patient and therapist.

With the idea of transference in mind, I first decided to throw a pot on the wheel. Once the pot stiffened up enough (a day or so later) I began to carve out of the one side of it. These carvings are called facets, and I’ve enjoyed making/looking at them for a while. They leave the surface very angular as opposed to rounded, like a usual pot would be. I only faceted the one side of the pot, and then I did some more directly across on the inner lip. Essentially, I transferred the surface decoration that was supposed to be retained to one side to the other. And that is how I chose to abstractly show the idea of transference in my ceramic pot. The pot still needs to be bisqued and glazed, so maybe I’ll do some more surface decoration with glaze to push the idea even more. This was a fun process for me, and I’ll definitely be doing it more in the future.

Unrequited Rescue Longings or Counter-transference

Good morning blog, good afternoon, good evening...

I have been thinking about my artistic background and how my training has changed the way I create my art work. I realized that my art work is becoming an authentic art work and became as well an artistic process. I used it to process my clients thoughts and behaviour. Sometimes after the session, I would take five minutes to express feelings. This helps me to reflect on the session and release feelings about my clients transference on the object but also it helps me to see what belongs to me and what belongs to my clients. I am talking probably about counter-transference while creating an impression about my client’s anger.

Anger's impression. SLB. 2012.

In my MA art therapy course, we have not covered the counter-transference yet nor the transference theory. I started to wonder about these as my art therapy training is changing the way I create art. I noticed this slow transformation at my placement while making an impression of my client ‘s anger. This transformation happened also in my personal creative work. 

What I witnessed through my practice is that transference creates strong bonds in our triangular relationship.

What is transference? My first experience would be based on my own therapeutic relationship with my therapist. I am projecting onto my therapist my intense emotions, the ones which are overwhelming feelings, those being hate, and love. I know intellectually the source of my overwhelming emotions. These emotions continue to exist in the holding of potent emotions.

We found that I developed some patterns, which occurs and are reenacted in my therapeutic relationships. These emotional patterns are closely broken down and enable me to learn why I behave the way I do within a relationship. I then learn to stay with the emotions until I digest it and process it. 

My therapy is a psychodynamic one. It tries to promote the development of transference, which means that I redirect emotions that were originally felt in my childhood onto my therapist. In this case the therapeutic aim is the working through of the transference relationship.

In art therapy this happens with my client, he / she transfers strong feelings from early relationship that originate from childhood experiences on to the art. Often these feelings are powerful.

When my clients have strong feelings emerging, I will acknowledge these feelings but will try to direct my client to the art making which is used to contains his/her emotions. Through the art making process, my client uses creative art materials and is enabled to re experience his/her unconscious experience under my gaze. The emotions will be then acknowledged while we look at the images together. 

I noticed that my client’s transference may be an unconscious projection of feelings and I become a significant person, holding my client’s past and repressed feelings. I noticed through the process of art making, sometimes, my clients might feel removed from their feelings like I am when in my therapy. 

The emotional feelings such as anger, sadness, loss, avoidance, fear of rejection unveil in the image and are talked through. Once my clients are able to recognize these feelings, then they are able to change themselves. My client’s projection changes and modifies our therapeutic relationship which changes and grows.

All this therapy and this processing changes my artistic background because I am investing myself with my own therapy and my client's art therapy. This is changing us all including my personal creativity. 

Edwards has mentioned about the feelings invested in images made in art therapy can, and often do, have a distinct emotional impact upon both the client and the art therapist feelings. (D. Edwards, 2007)