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We need to be clear, however, that the transference is not a unique phenomenon of analytic treatment. Transference phenomena are universal and operate within almost every social situation. Clearly, therefore, the transference is, to some extent, at work within every psychotherapeutic and counselling relationship of whatever modality. Most practitioners from these other modalities have little or no knowledge of the transference and how it operates and, for the most part, are not trained to recognise its significance, let alone facilitate, interpret or otherwise work with it. Paradoxically, it is easier for these other practitioners to avoid the pitfalls that are likely to be encountered within an analysis, because of the likelihood that they will steer their clients, whether directly or otherwise, towards a much more conscious and reality-focused orientation in the therapy. In so doing, they, in effect, discourage any profound flowering of the transference relationship with them. In psychoanalysis, on the other hand, the transference is always anticipated and facilitated by the analyst, if not overtly orchestrated by them. For this reason, practitioners from other modalities are much less likely than psychoanalytic practitioners to face complaints that have their roots in florid transference phenomena, although this is by no means entirely out of the question.
This also ties in very well with research which has reliably established that all modalities of psychotherapy are capable of being effective: of producing some helpful change in the patient or client. What such research also showed, however, is that the factor which most influences such change is not the modality of the therapy but the quality of the relationship between the patient or client and their therapist, regardless of modality.
Nevertheless, we should not lose sight of one very significant difference within the psychoanalytic encounter, compared with all other forms of psychological therapy, which is that the patient’s symptoms are not addressed directly. There is no objective of producing relief from those symptoms in a conventional manner, such as that followed by the medical model. Unlike other forms of therapy, psychoanalytic practitioners are not concerned directly with their patients’ symptoms although, of course, they do not simply ignore them. Far from it. Symptoms are almost always a rich source of insight. These are often valuable hidden indicators, symbols or even obfuscuators of some underlying disturbance whose nature can only be discovered through an understanding of the transference relationship that develops between patient and analyst. The danger of encouraging a patient to give up their symptom, without first allowing them to uncover any underlying disturbance, is that the presenting symptom is likely to be replaced by a new and often far more debilitating or harmful one; which more effectively conceals the true nature of the underlying disturbance that the original symptom was designed to conceal. When patients are ready to do so, they will usually abandon their symptoms quite spontaneously and unprompted by their analyst.