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Counselling Theory and Practice:- Spiritual Direction

Prayer Guiding & Spiritual Direction

The ‘As If’ Relationship

Issues of Transference and Counter-Transference

Applications to Spiritual Accompaniment

Notes from a Special Half Day Session

PART TWO :-

COUNTER-TRANSFERENCE

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© 2010 - Peter Creagh, Trainer, Supervisor and BACP Registered Counsellor UKRC
CBT
Counselling Theory and Practice:- Spiritual Direction

Prayer Guiding & Spiritual Direction


The ‘As If’ Relationship
Issues of Transference and Counter-Transference :- Pt 2

The Issue of Counter-Transference

INTRODUCTION

This is Part 2 of a two-part series. These notes support a presentation and workshop
delivered by the Author to Spiritual Directors. They are intended to support a series of
experiential exercises and subsequent discussions. Part 2 needs to be read after Part 1.

Part 1 addressed the issues of defences and particularly transference. It outlined the
inevitability of transference in any meaningful relationship and looked at some aspects of
transference that could affect the helper: client relationship.

Now it is important to acknowledge, that if clients can experience transference in the


relationship than it follows that the director/helper can similarly be affected. When this
occurs, it is referred to as counter- transference These notes will explore this concept and
look at the two main types of counter-transference and some sub-types. It will outline
some examples of each and explore the possible effects of counter-transference on the
relationship between the Spiritual Directee ( client) and the Spiritual Director.

COUNTER - TRANSFERENCE

There are two main definitions of counter-transference. The first is helper activated
counter-transference and the second is helper reactivated counter-transference. The
second of these is more commonly accepted as the main working definition in helping
relationships. However, let us first ,briefly, outline ‘Helper Activated ‘ Transference.

HELPER ACTIVATED Just as clients can transfer emotional attitudes and feelings
from the past into the relationship, so too can the helper. These attitudes and feelings can
be counter-productive and belong to the helpers past. They can make it particularly
difficult to work with certain types of people. The following examples are taken from
Jacobs (1993)

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© 2010 - Peter Creagh, Trainer, Supervisor and BACP Registered Counsellor UKRC
CBT
Counselling Theory and Practice:- Spiritual Direction

Example 1 If you had a “bad” experience working with a person who became too
dependent upon you and had been suffering from extreme anxiety, you may find yourself
being very wary the next time you met a client who presented with the same symptoms. If
this was not recognised for what it is then the relationship may not work.

One way of discerning helper activated transference is to check out the ‘as if’ effect. You
could ask yourself, ‘are you treating or reacting to this new person as if they were
the same or similar to a relationship with a previous person you were guiding or
directing’ ?

Example 2 You may be a strong believer in people being independent, and this may
normally help you in your approach to spiritual direction and prayer guiding. However,
your views on this may be based on your own (unconscious) difficulties in co-operating
with others.

This ‘blind- spot’ concerns your ability to relate effectively in dependent and inter-
dependent relationships. Consequently, you will ‘work’ so as to avoid allowing people to
become in any way dependent upon you for any length of time. Yet sometimes this may
be important in early and challenging stages of the helper-client relationship.

Jacobs (1993) suggests that examples of such blind spots and counter-transference in
this negative sense could be multiplied, since every person has some areas of
understanding where she/he is less sensitive. Once again this leads back to the
importance of self-awareness, reflection and supervision.

HELPER RE-ACTIVATED This is the most commonly accepted definition of


counter-transference. It addresses the feelings, attitudes and reactions of the helper
which are evoked by the helping relationship and their response to the client’s
transference. It is important to note that the helper’s counter-transference can have either
a positive or negative effect.

These reactions can be caused by one of three sub-types of this counter-transference,


objective, concordant and complementary counter-transference. Before looking at these it
is important to stress the need for helper’s to, develop a considerable amount of self-
awareness, have the ability to convey advanced empathy and to have access to
supervision of their work. The three types of this are :

• OBJECTIVE COUNTER- TRANSFERENCE

• CONCORDANT COUNTER-TRANSFERENCE

• COMPLEMENTARY COUNTER- TRANSFERENCE

We will now look at each of these in turn.

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© 2010 - Peter Creagh, Trainer, Supervisor and BACP Registered Counsellor UKRC
CBT
Counselling Theory and Practice:- Spiritual Direction

OBJECTIVE COUNTER- TRANSFERENCE. Winnicott (1960) coined this phrase. It


refers to the helper’s/director’s love/hate relationship to the actual personality and
behaviour of the client.

Example As a Director you may feel very irritated with a Directee ( e.g. Harry).

Now previously, Harry may have indicated that he could often find it difficult to make
relationships. This could help YOU, the Director, to reflect on how this could not only
reflect on how others( including yourself) react towards Harry but, more importantly, what
clues this could provide concerning Harry’s self-concept and self-esteem and how these
could be influencing his inter-personal relationships, both in the room with you and also
with others outside.

CONCORDANT COUNTER-TRANSFERENCE . As a Director you experience what


the Directee is experiencing inside but is denying. This occurs because of your
advanced empathy and the Directee’s transference of unwanted ‘parts of their self’ into
or onto the you , the Director

Example 1. You listen to a Directee (called Max) telling his story and you feel very sad,
sometimes to the point of shedding open tears. Yet Max shows no sign of sadness. This
can indicate Max’s inability to show or express some emotions and YOUR counter-
transference shows the real depth of feelings inside him.

Example 2. A Directee ( Max) tells of an encounter or incident that makes him


cry, and indeed leads to tears. Yet you, the Director, feel no sadness but do feel very
angry. Where do these angry feelings come from? If not from you , then it probably
indicates Max’s own deep-seated anger or fury

COMPLEMENTARY COUNTER- TRANSFERENCE. Here the Director starts to feel like


a person connected either with the story being told by the Directee or a significant
parental/authority figure from the client’s past.

Example l. A Directee called Leonora may evoke in you, the Director, feelings about
being extremely careful about what you can or could do or say that might ‘hurt’ Leonora.

i.e. a feeling that she must be treated with ‘kid gloves’ However, careful listening to the
Leonora reveals that ‘other people seem to shy away from me ‘This could indicate how
others may feel in her company and provide very useful insights for the helping
relationship.

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© 2010 - Peter Creagh, Trainer, Supervisor and BACP Registered Counsellor UKRC
CBT
Counselling Theory and Practice:- Spiritual Direction

Example 2. Leonora evokes parental feelings in you that lead to inclinations to protect
her. This may benefit by being explored by you and Leonora to find the meaning of this
transference / counter- transference in relation to her evoking parental/nurturing feelings
in others.

Additional Points Very often further clues to counter-transference can occur when You,
the Director, take ‘the case’ to supervision. You can be ‘sucked into’ thinking, feelings
and acting like the Directee with your supervisor,

e.g. your confusion, which mirrors the Directee’s confusion leads in turn to the supervisor
feeling very confused !

Or the Directee ‘dumps’ anger onto you who in turn ‘dump’ it onto your supervisor.

Finally, it is important to note that the resolution by YOU ,the Director , of the counter-
transference, either in personal reflection and/or in supervision, is one of the main
ingredients of casework which enables your Directees to resolve and relinquish their
transference.

Summary on Counter-Transference

Counter-transference is part of all helping relationships

There are two basic types, activated and re-activated

Activated counter-transference belongs to the helper’s own past

Re-Activated counter-transference is the most commonly accepted form of counter-


transference and refers to the Director’s response to the Directee’s transference.

Accurate recognition, assessment and resolution of the transference:


counter-transference experience requires great self-awareness, empathy and skills on the
part of the Director.

Objective counter-transference is the Director’s love/hate response to the Directee’s


personality and behaviour

Concordant counter-transference is where the Director ‘experiences’ the denied feelings


of the Directee.

Complementary counter-transference is where the Director can act ‘as if’ they were a
significant figure in the Directee’s life (past or present).

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© 2010 - Peter Creagh, Trainer, Supervisor and BACP Registered Counsellor UKRC
CBT
Counselling Theory and Practice:- Spiritual Direction

CONCLUSIONS

These notes are both based on and informed by the author’s practical experience of
counselling and training over the past 20 years. Much of the text is drawn from this
experience and from supervising helpers in a wide variety of settings. In addition the texts
outlined in the Bibliography have informed both notes on transference and counter-
transference.

Transference and counter-transference are extremely important concepts in helping and


other relationships. They are more apparent in long-term and close relationships. It is
important that Director/Helper monitor their practice and begins to get a ‘feel’ for
occurrences of transference. Finally, the ability of the helper to recognise and deal both
with the client’s transference and to recognise and their own counter-transference can be
a positive force for good in the relationship. However, this pre-supposes the recognition
by the helper for a high level of self-awareness, knowledge, inter-personal skills and the
importance of supervision.

NOTE:

If this is part of a presentation — a brief exercise now follows)

An Addendum outlines Kolb’s Learning Cycle as this can be very useful in working
through issues of Transference and Counter-transference.

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© 2010 - Peter Creagh, Trainer, Supervisor and BACP Registered Counsellor UKRC
CBT
Counselling Theory and Practice:- Spiritual Direction

ADDENDUM:- KOLB’s EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING CYCLE


Transference and counter- transference are part of all helping and meaningful
relationships and therefore will almost inevitably occur in prayer guiding and spiritual
direction. They are part of the ‘experiences’ of direction and may require exploration as
and when they arise. If the decision is taken to explore the issue, then it can be helpful to
inform this exploration in the light of KoIb’s Experiential Learning Cycle. This is outlined in
the following figure.

1. EXPERIENCING
What Happened?
Open to & engaging
With experiences

4. EXPERIMENTATION 2 REFLECTION
What can/do we do? What was it like ?
Trying things out – doing Investigating the
Things differently Experience(s)

3. CONCEPTUALISING
What does it mean?
Analysing & creating
Meaning from experience

Adapted from Morrison, T (1998) Casework Consolidation. Whitby & Birch, London
QPeter Creagh (2005)

Heartsease Training, Shifnal Shropshire email : - petercreagh43@virginmedia.com 7

© 2010 - Peter Creagh, Trainer, Supervisor and BACP Registered Counsellor UKRC
CBT
Counselling Theory and Practice:- Spiritual Direction

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Brown,D & Pedder ,J 1979 Introduction to Psychotherapy .Tavistock, London

Cairns,F. 1994 A Beginners Guide to Transference & Counter-


Transference, Counselling Nov 94, BACP, Rugby

Hough, M . 2002 A Practical Approach to Counselling Prentice-Hall

Jacobs,M.1993 Still Small Voice SPCK

Jacobs,M.1998 The Presenting Past OU Press

Jacobs,M.1999 Psychodynamic Counselling in Action Sage, London

McLeod,J 1998 An Introduction to Counselling OU Press

Stewart,I & Joines,V 1987 TA Today — A New Introduction to Transactional


Analysis Lifespace ,Nottingham

Winnicott,DW 1965 The Maturational Processes and Hogarth Press


the Facilitating Environment London

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© 2010 - Peter Creagh, Trainer, Supervisor and BACP Registered Counsellor UKRC
CBT

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