In her magnificent teaching style, Polly Young-Eisendrath takes us on a journey through the psychological concepts of transference and countertransference, also known as projective identification. These concepts refer to the sense of being emotionally kidnapped by someone else’s reality. Each of us unconsciously projects and evokes certain dynamics in our close relationships. These dynamics affect partner relationships, relationships with adult children, between adult siblings, relationships with a boss, a leader, a spiritual teacher, and in psychotherapy.
Being able to deal with these transference- countertransference dynamics requires that we recognize them as they are happening. Next it is about listening, hearing and seeing the other person’s perspective, even when we are emotionally activated. For this to happen, we also must learn to track our own subjectivity. Our ability to deal with these emotionally-charged conversations will improve our relationship with others.
Being able to listen in a mindful way requires us to track our subjective experience when we are hearing something that is emotionally upsetting or when we sense that we are emotionally ‘caught’.
In this course you will get a tool that helps you track your own subjectivity. Sensing your own subjectivity helps to create a mindful space in relationships. This increases trust for all parties that they can talk about emotionally challenging topics without retaliation. This course enables you to have difficult and emotional conversations in your life.
The classes are available now.
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Recognize the emotional repeating patterns in your communication with others, for example, in a relationship with a partner, an adult child, a sibling, or a person in an authority position.
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Describe the inner work (learning to track your own subjectivity) that is needed to deal with the phenomena of transference and countertransference.
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Apply the tool ‘snow globe of subjectivity’ to increase your ability to deal with transference-countertransference dynamics in your professional practice and your personal relationships.
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Describe what transference-countertransference is and how it may show up in different relationships in your life.
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Apply mindfulness techniques so that you learn about your own subjectivity thereby creating space for another person’s subjectivity.
Class 1. Introduction of teacher & topicIn this class Polly Young-Eisendrath introduces herself and the topic of this course—transference and countertransference. Do we recognize the dynamics in our relationships with others, as though we’re trapped in an emotional space that we cannot escape from? This course is about how transference/countertransference affects our interpersonal communications.
Class 2. Transference, countertransference and projective identification
In this class Polly Young-Eisendrath breaks down these somewhat abstract terms. Projective identification is a direct experience that all of us have. It refers to interactions with others in which we seem to be captured or kidnapped by their emotions or their emotional meanings and then carried into behaviors that we had not intended to display.
Class 3. Transference & countertransference in therapy
The focus of this class is the therapeutic relationship. Especially in the stage of therapy when you begin to talk about the relationship between your client and yourself, the therapist needs to have the skills of being able to create a mindful space needed for analyzing what shows up in the relationship and to be a compassionate witness.
Class 4. Projective identification in couples
In this class examples are given of transference-countertransference dynamics in relationships with a partner. When couples are caught in this dynamic, it feels like there is no way out. The examples give you a sense of the unconscious communication that is taking place between partners. They show how the dynamics go back and forth, and how it evokes in each person some image, or body sensation, or association through language, in a way that the other person seems to play out what the first person is projecting.
Class 5. Knowing your own Subjectivity
One of the things that we need to keep track of in times of conflict, emotional reactivity or when we feel kidnapped by the other’s emotions, is our own subjectivity. Human subjectivity is complex and individualistic. This class discusses the six domains of our subjective life that affect the way we feel, hear, and see things. If you want to begin to track your own unconscious sensations, you have to become familiar with your subjectivity.
Class 6. Dreams and projective identification
Another way of learning about our own subjectivity is through dreams; dreams can reveal to us, our subjectivity and may provide a deeper understanding. This helps us to create space for other people’s subjectivity. We may then be able to step in and feel what it is like to have that particular mother complex or that childhood wound; we might be able to make room, in our own snow globe, for compassion for that other person’s experience, without getting caught in it.
