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Unconscious Displacements in College Teacher and Student Relationships: Conceptualizing, Identifying, and Managing Transference

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Abstract

Transference is an unconscious displacement of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors from a previous significant relationship onto a current relationship—a phenomenon that teachers and students both enact with each other, sometimes resulting in a dramatic intensification of those relationships. Transference can pertain importantly to understanding and managing the complex, dynamic, intersubjective system that constitutes the educational helping relationship. Based on an analysis of over 350 items in the college teaching and transference literatures, this article provides: (a) a conceptual foundation for understanding transference, (b) 15 indicators of its possible occurrence, and (c) 9 recommendations for its effective management.

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  1. Graduate School of Education at, Portland State University, USA

    Douglas L. Robertson (Professor of Education in the)

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  1. Douglas L. Robertson
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Robertson, D.L. Unconscious Displacements in College Teacher and Student Relationships: Conceptualizing, Identifying, and Managing Transference. Innovative Higher Education 23, 151–169 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1022990316742

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