Transference in Coaching Session

I think that not only a therapist but also a coach should pay attention to "transference" between a client and coach in a session, so I capsulized the concept below.

             This psychological phenomenon between a client and therapist is one of the key concepts in a therapeutic setting. Freud categorized this concept into the following three ideas.

1 The positive transference, in which the patient’s feelings for the therapist are primarily affection and trust.

2 The negative transference, consisting primarily of hostility and suspicion.

3 The un-neutralized erotic transference, in which the patient experiences insistent desire for sexual intimacy with the analyst. (Kahn, 2002, pp.184-185)

About the positive transference, Freud regarded it as an unobjectionable phenomenon and insisted that it enabled a therapist to provide a client with a sense of trust or safety which built a preferable relationship between the client and therapist. On the other hand, Freud raised an alert over the negative transference. He argued that a therapist must intervene in and remove it if the transference comes up in the session. Otherwise the therapy session will not work for a client. Likewise the negative transference, Freud warned that the erotic transference had a negative impact on the therapy session. Although it is sometimes recognized as a kind of the positive transference, Freud explained that “if those feelings persisted in spite of the analyst’s best effort to convert them to analyzable material, there was nothing to do but refer the patient to another therapist” (Kahn, 2002, p.186). Thus, a therapist should have a competency to discern the type of transference. 

Reference

Basic Freud: Psychoanalytic Thought for the 21st Century

Primary Model of Pathology in Psychoanalytical Force

              Regarding the primary model of pathology in 2^nd force, I’d like to describe the Freudian view of pathology in the following.

              As for the key concept of a Freudian view of pathology, Munroe (1955) explicates that “the idea of the symptom as an adaptive mechanism has become a commonplace and that its cure is always envisaged as handling of the underlying (typically unconscious) dynamics rather than the symptom itself” (p. 280). In other words, Freudians regard a symptom of our mental illness as a kind of an adjustment mechanism to protect our “self” from the external world. Moreover, the characteristic of a Freudian view about treatment of pathology is that they often don’t focus on the symptom itself but our unconscious realm.

The Oedipus complex is one of the well-known pathological symptoms in Freudian views related to our unconsciousness. To explain the overview of this symptom, the Oedipus complex is that “all boys experience the unconscious wish to get rid of father and replace him as mother’s lover, and that all girls carry the unconscious wish to eliminate mother and replace her as father’s lover” (Kahn, 2002, p. 57). In this example, Freudians don’t pay attention to the superficial phenomenon (all boys and girls tend to have the desire to obliterate the existence of their father or mother.) but attempt to elucidate the mechanism by shedding light on our repressed unconsciousness. Although Freudians are likely to reduce our pathology into the issue of only our repressed unconsciousness, it is highly estimable for them to clarify the relationship between some pathologies and human unconscious realm.

Reference

1Basic Freud: Psychoanalytic Thought for the 21st Century

2Schools of psychoanalytic thought;: An exposition, critique, and attempt at integration