Co-Transference: The Arc Between Transference & Counter-Transference

Generally, the kind of people that become clinicians have a sensitivity to and proclivity for attuning themselves to their own emotions and those of others. Emotions are the cognitive counterpart to feelings which are the raw experience of our bodies that inform us of impactful events both internally and socially. There are many sources of these emotions in clinical work. We have a tendency to feel: a resonance with what our clients are feeling (empathy), unrecognized emotions that our clients are stating and not yet experiencing fully (talking about an issue yet not experiencing the feelings), a reaction to memories of our own that parallel a client’s experience or issues. Yet there are deeper levels of emotion that are evoked on both sides: emotions arising from client experience that is a recreation of relationships from earlier periods of experience wherein the clinician is induced into feeling states that mimic prior relationships in their developmental history.

The range of clinician experiences with the wide variety of experiences that are evoked will be explored in small group and group-as-a-whole conversation with facilitation.

Learning Objectives

Participants will be able to:

1. Describe the difference between classical and modern understandings of transference and counter-transference

2. List and describe the four stages of therapists coping with countertransference.

3. Describe the interchange of emotional energy that flows between clients and clinicians and strategies for making the awareness of this phenomenon useful for the therapeutic process

The session will be facilitated by Charles S Pohl LCSW who has been a clinical social worker for the past 45 years. He has supervised many MSW interns and LMSWs and teaches the fundamentals of psychotherapy to psychiatry residents. He is also a Certified Group Psychotherapist (CGP) for the past 30 years and is a Fellow of the American Group Psychotherapy Association. You can see Charlie's CV here: CSP Curriculum Vita 4_6_2026.

TWO clinical CEU hours will be awarded to all who participate in the entire session.