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.

Keywords:

• cognitive science
• explicit processing
• implicit processing
• organizing patterns
• organizing principles
• relational field theory
• transference

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

James L. Fosshage

James L. Fosshage, PhD, is Co-founder, Board Director, Faculty and Supervisor of the National Institute for the Psychotherapies; Clinical Professor of Psychology and Consultant, New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis; and Founding Faculty Member and Supervisor, Institute for the Psychoanalytic Study of Subjectivity. He maintains a practice in New York City and Tenafly, NJ.

Susan Carroll Berck

Susan Carroll Berck, PsyD, PhD, is a clinical psychologist in practice in the mid-Hudson Valley. She also holds a doctorate in organic chemistry and is interested in the application of scientific findings to the theory and practice of psychoanalysis.

Charles Finlon

Charles Finlon, LCSW, is a supervisor, faculty member, and the board president at the National Institute for the Psychotherapies in New York. He is faculty at NYU’s Silver School of Social Work and maintains practices in New York City and Saugerties, NY.

Noah Glassman

Noah Glassman, PhD, is a graduate of the NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis and is a member of its Psychoanalytic Society. He is in private practice in Manhattan.

Jonathan Raffes

Jonathan Raffes, PhD, is a graduate of the NYU Postdoctoral Program and the Urban Institute for Families. He is former faculty at Columbia University Medical Center and is in private practice in New York City.