Legitimizing Work with Extra-Therapeutic Transferences: A Self Psychological Perspective

Transferences from patients’ everyday lives, or extra-therapeutic transferences, provide rich material in psychoanalytic psychotherapy practice, but the literature has mainly ignored this topic, reserving the term transference for the therapy relationship. While references to the therapy relationship may also be present or emerge from this material, at times explicit interpretations of extra therapeutic transferences are appropriate, without reference to the therapy relationship. Through an extensive literature review and case illustrations from the author’s practice, this paper suggests that the concept of extra-therapeutic transference should be revisited and integrated with a broader understanding of transference, to bring theory more in line with actual practice.