Within this essay I will be discussing the terms of transference, countertransference and also projection. Clients and individuals learn from all of their experiences within their life. Sometimes these past experiences come into the individuals’ present day positions. Transference and countertransference are phenomena related to projection that transpire naturally for every individual client and therapist. Each individual has three levels of consciousness these are the unconscious, preconscious and the conscious layer. The conscious is reality based, the material within the conscious is in awareness. The preconscious layer contains material that is out of awareness, but that could be in awareness. (Bruscia, 1998). An example of preconscious…show more content… The therapeutic relationship is the relationship between the client and the therapist. Within this relationship the feelings and attitudes are expressed. Gelso and Carter (1994) explain that there are three main components to a therapeutic relationship. These are a working alliance, a transference – countertransference configuration and a real relationship. Transference means reliving certain significant relationships from the client's past. (Bruscia, 1998.) It occurs in all of our relationships, it is related to some feelings, but not all feelings, that a client may have towards the therapist. Numerous authors define transference in similar but slightly different ways. All of them seem to agree that transference is an unconscious form of projection from the client onto the therapists and a universal phenomenon (Wiener 2009, p. 12). It is important to take in the different definitions in order to fully understand transference. Macaskie (2008) describes transference as a fundamental process in human relationships which makes use of learning from past experiences. She also outlines that transference brings the advantage that we do not need to keep learning from afresh. The problem is that we over – generalise from previous experiences of significant relationships, particularly with family members, and behave in new relationships as if…show more content… It is important to address that countertransference was not addressed for decades. Freud had a negative attitude to countertransference. In 1910 he outlined that a therapist should ‘overcome’ the feeling of countertransference. Gelso and Hayes ( ) state that no matter what definition of countertransference and no matter how well ‘therapized’ the therapist, there is an agreement that countertransference will always be part of the work (p. 4). This is coming after countertransference was understudied for a number of years due to Freud’s statements. Bruscia (1998) states that countertransference occurs whenever a therapist interacts with a client in ways that resembles relationship patterns in either the therapist's life or the client's life. Implicit is a replication in the present of relationships patterns in the past, a generalization of these patterns from one person to another and from real-life situations to the therapy situation, the casting of the client and/or therapist within the past relationship, and re - experiencing of the same or similar feelings, conflicts, impulses, drives, and fantasies through identification (Bruscia, 1998, p. 52). Both transference and countertransference can generalise past experiences to the present. It can assign the therapist or the client as on object of the past. Countertransference is any feeling whether