Episode 9: Transference: The Outdated Map This process of active clinging to an outmoded view of reality is the basis for much mental illness. Psychiatrists refer to it as transference. There are probably as many subtle variations of the definition of transference as there are psychiatrists. My own definition is: that which is usually acquired in the childhood environment but which is inappropriately transferred into the adult environment. The ways in which transference manifests itself, while always pervasive and destructive, are often subtle. Yet the clearest examples must be subtle. One such example was a patient whose treatment failed by virtue of his transference. He was a brilliant but unsuccessful computer technician in his early thirties, who came to see me because his wife had left him, taking their two children. He was not particularly unhappy to lose her, but he was devastated by the loss of his children, to whom he was deeply attached. It was in t
Whatever the mind of a man can conceive, he can achieve
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