Expanding Our Understanding of Transferences as Organizing Patterns: Theoretical Evolution, Contributions of Other Sciences, and Clinical Implications

Abstract

Following a schematic history of the evolving concept of transference with a focus on the more recently emergent organizing model, we delineate and further integrate relevant empirical findings and theoretical contributions of other scientific discourses, namely, cognitive science, infant and attachment research, social cognition research, biological sciences, and systems theory. Conceptualizing mind, and more particularly transference, as principally organizing activity involving perceptions, affects, motives, meanings and verbal and sensorial symbolic encoding and processing better captures the mind’s complex functioning on implicit and explicit levels within relational systems. Lastly, we elucidate important clinical implications, addressing some of the now outmoded “default” technical assumptions.