11 Patterns as Templates

Understanding Transference

ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT cornerstones of our work is the idea of transference. Transference involves the unconscious application of previous patterns onto a current situation. This process is an adaptive one. We use our previous experience as a template from which to make sense of current interactions. It is when the pattern has been misapplied or does not fit that we notice the disjunction and call it transference.

This type of matching to pattern is the basis for how we learn. It also reflects the process of learning itself, in which "remembering . . . implies a process in which something that happened within the brain is now happening again" (Levin, 1995, p. 108). There is a patterning that ...

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