Review of General Psychology 1998 Vol 2 No 1 81 120 Copyright 1998 by the Educational Publishing Foundation 1089 2680 98 13 00 Transference in Everyday Experience Implications of Experimental Research for Relevant Clinical Phenomena Susan M Andersen and Michele S Berk New York University Experimental research examining the clinical concept of transference S Freud 1912 1958 H S Sullivan 1953 using a social cognitive model has demonstrated that mental representations of significant others are stored in memory and can be activated and applied in new social encounters with consequences for cognition evaluation affect motivation expectancies and self evaluations S M Andersen N S Glassman 1996 S M Andersen I Reznik S Chen 1997 Thesefindingsconstitute an empirical demonstration of transference in everyday social relations and suggest that transference is a normal nonpathological process occurring both inside and outside of psychotherapy following basic rules of social information processing In this article clinical implications of this research are discussed including how the content versus process of transference may contribute to maladaptive transference responses and the potential value of identifying triggering cues in transference in real life and in therapy to promote more adaptive responding Mental representations of significant others profoundly influence everyday life In daily social interactions our emotions motivations inferences self evaluations and behaviors are all affected to an extent by information in memory about our past relationships with important others Indeed interpersonal relationships have long been thought to be basic to both personality and psychopathology e g Bowlby 1969 1973 1980 Freud 1912 1958 Greenberg Mitchell 1983 Guidano Liotti 1983 Homey 1939 Horowitz 1991 Kelly 1955 Luborsky Crits Christoph 1990 Rogers 1951 Safran Segal 1990 Shaver Rubenstein 1980 Sullivan 1953 Wachtel 1981 The common assumption across the numerous theories in these areas is that interpersonalrelationship patterns learned earlier in life with significant others may provide a framework for later social relations Relationship patterns may influence current everyday behavior because they are stored in memory and applied to new interpersonal encounters In our own work we have examined this process empirically and have conceptualized it in social cognitive terms that is in terms of mental representations of significant others that can be activated and applied to new people We regard careful empirical work on this topic as crucial in uncovering the precise mechanisms by which past relationships may influence present ones and in establishing the validity of this kind of phenomenon To this end we have proposed a social cognitive model of transference that has been examined in carefully controlled experimental research with normal samples of participants For related conceptual approaches see Baldwin 1992 Mayer et al 1993 Singer 1985 1988 Singer Singer 1994 Wachtel 1981 Westen 1988 In this research it has been shown that mental representations of significant others serve as storehouses of information about given individuals from one s life and can be activated made ready for use and applied to used to interpret other individuals and that this is especially likely when the new individual in some way resembles a significant other Andersen Baum 1994 Andersen Cole 1990 Andersen Glassman Chen Cole 1995 Andersen Reznik Manzella 1996 Baum Andersen in press Hinkley Andersen 1996 We argue that this Susan M Andersen and Michele S Berk Department of Psychology New York University Preparation of this article was supported by Grant R01 MH48789 from the National Institute of Mental Health We would like to thank Noah Glassman Dan Hart Mardi Horowitz and Marlene Moretti for their comments on an earlier draft of this article Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Susan M Andersen Department of Psychology New York University 6 Washington Place 4th Floor New York New York 10003 81 82 ANDERSEN AND BERK is the basic process by which transference occurs in everyday social relations Andersen Glassman 1996 Because this process is consistent with what is known about basic social cognition and the operation of social constructs stereotypes and exemplar representations Andersen Klatzky 1987 Andersen Klatzky Murray 1990 Brewer 1988 Higgins 1989b Higgins King 1981 Smith Zarate 1992 this work suggests that basic social cognitive processes may be at the root of transference in everyday social perception Specifically we have shown that people use significant other representations to go beyond the information given about a new person Bruner 1957 by making representationconsistent inferences about him or her that is misremembering him or her in terms of qualities that he or she does not have but rather are part of the significant other representation i e those not seen in the new person but consistent with the significant other representation see Andersen et al 1995 see also Cantor Mischel 1977 Perceivers seem to treat what they inferred at the time of learning about a new person based on the significant other representation as something actually learned see Johnson Hastroudi Lindsay 1993 Johnson Raye 1981 Hence the new person is remembered as if he or she were more similar to the significant other than is actually the case Andersen et al 1995 1996 Andersen Baum 1994 Andersen Cole 1990 Hinkley Andersen 1996 Moreover when a given significant other representation is activated representation consistent evaluative emotional motivational and self definitional processes stored in memory with the significantother representation are also set into play Andersen Baum 1994 Andersen et al 1996 Baum Andersen in press Hinkley Andersen 1996 Hence this body of work has empirically demonstrated that the transference process does occur that it consists of significantother activation and application and that it has multiple consequences of various kinds in interpersonal relations In this article we describe our program of experimental research on transference and consider its clinical implications First we briefly review major theoretical perspectives on transference and describe the basic tenets of the empirically based social cognitive model Next we review the model s basic methods and findings as a springboard for describing the clinical implications of this work In particular we describe the ways in which the
View Full Document
Unlocking...