The unconscious displacement of emotions from people who were important during one’s childhood, such as parents, to other people during adulthood. (See also psychoanalysis.)
n. (in psychoanalysis) the process by which a patient comes to feel and act towards the therapist as though he or she were somebody from the patient’s past life, especially a powerful parent. The patient’s transference feelings may be of love or of hatred, but they are inappropriate to the actual person of the therapist. Countertransference is the reaction of the therapist to the patient, which is similarly based on past relationships.
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