Transference in the school context :|an examination of self and object representations

Abstract

This study aimed to investigate whether the term transference could be a useful concept to understand the relationship between a student and a teacher. Transference was examined in terms of the participants’ object and self-with-other representations. One hundred twenty-five university students participated in the study. By means of a design with two sessions, their representations of eight targets and their self representations with each of these targets were obtained: the mother, the father, the male and female teachers, the male and female friends and the male and female acquaintances. It was hypothesized that participants would describe their teachers and self-with-teachers most similar to their parents and self-with-parents, in comparison to other targets, and that there would be gender congruency in this transference. Similarity rates between specific pairs of representations were calculated to test the hypotheses. Additionally, the self-with-other representations were coded in agency and communion dimensions to examine them further. The findings briefly indicated that representation of the teacher (and the self-with teacher) was related to those of the mother and the female friend, whereas self-with teacher representations were found to be not as related to the self-with-parents as the self-with-friends. The main results, together with the subsidiary findings are discussed in the light of the psychoanalytic and the social-cognitive theories. Finally, it is attempted to interpret the results in the context of Turkey.