Harran Ilahiyat Journal

Abstract

Transference refers to an individual’s redirection of unconscious emotions felt towards important figures in his/her life, such as parents, to other people through unconscious processes. Being a sensitive issue in counselling, transference is the client’s unconscious redirection of his/her feelings, desires and reactions involving important figures in life, to the counsellor. Although the client can hardly remember the sad experiences and the events earlier in life, he/she may unconsciously redirect his/her reactions to the counsellor. These reactions can be positive transference emerging as love, admiration and faith or negative transference emerging as hatred, opposition and aggression. On the other hand, countertransference is the act of the counsellor’s redirecting his/her unconscious needs, conflicts and emotional reactions to the client in response to transference. Considered as the recurrence of an old relationship by traditional psychoanalysis, transference is critical as it provides clues as to the client's childhood relationships and enables what the client has suppressed to come to the surface. It is essential that the counsellor be aware of his/her own countertransference and be able to use it as a guide to understand the inner world of the client to be able to produce successful outcomes out of the counselling process.
Being different from the conception of God proposed by organized religion, individual conception of God is a phenomenon that can be affected by important figures encountered earlier in life. Such conception is based on the individual's personal life story, particularly on his/her relational learning experiences. The conception of God, which is affected by the image of parents and past experiences, particularly those of the childhood, can be charged with some positive or negative emotions. Therefore, an adult's positive or negative feelings towards God and his/her expectations from Him could be traced back to the adult’s previous relationships. Being frequently discussed in spiritual counselling, this issue is worth examination through the lens of transference and countertransference, which can hardly be ignored in the client-counsellor relationships. This is because the spiritual counselling environment, which readily accepts the client’s problems intertwined with his/her religious/spiritual beliefs, provides ample room for unearthing the transfer material, including God, during the counselling process. To achieve the objectives of the counselling in such an environment, it is essential that the spiritual counsellor, to whom the client redirects his/her feelings, wishes, reactions and expectations regarding the conception of God, not only analyse the transference accurately but also interpret it appropriately and be aware of his/her own countertransference.
In spiritual counselling, changing the conception of dysfunctional God so as to enable the client to establish a more secure relationship with God depends on forming a strong and secure bond with the client, encouraging the client to abandon maladaptive ways of establishing relations, and working on client transference and counsellor countertransference. This study addresses the underresearched notions of transference and countertransference, which are considered important in spiritual counselling, as well as in any counselling process, and it aims to examine the conception of God in spiritual counselling from the lens of these concepts. A major finding of this review study is that transference assumes a significant place in spiritual counselling relationships. This study revealed that a counselling environment in which the conception of God is studied may show dysfunctional cognition and behaviour related to the counsellor’s beliefs. It further highlighted the importance of the counsellor’s need to know that his/her countertransference can affect the counselling process. In this respect, this study could contribute to the development of spiritual counselling, a profession in its infancy our country.