Transference and Countertransference in Couples Therapy
Working Skillfully with Involuntary Client-Therapist Enactments in the Therapy Room
An EFT approach learning to how deal with our own emotions when clients have spontaneous activation of attachment expectations and internal working models.
📅 Date: TBC (Saturday 27.2.2027)
🕙 Time: 10:00am – 5:00pm (AEDT)
📍 Location: Online
Do your clients ever get angry at you, get disappointed in you, put you on a pedestal, flirt with you? How do you feel when that happens? What do you do with these feelings? How do you react?
Even the most experienced couples therapists encounter moments where the therapy process becomes emotionally charged, confusing, or subtly derailed.
These are not mistakes. These client behaviours are likely to be transference reactions re-enacting early attachment relationships with you. Your feelings and reactions may be countertransference reactions from your own early attachment relationships, but more likely important clinical information about the client’s attachment strategies.
They are spontaneous and involuntary enactments — powerful, often implicit attachment patterns that emerge between therapist and clients.
Handled poorly, they can:
- Reinforce the couple’s cycle
- Create therapeutic impasses
- Lead to therapist self-doubt or over-involvement
Handled skillfully, they become:
- Experiential doorways into deeper attachment processes
- Opportunities for corrective emotional experience
- Catalysts for profound relational change
What You Will Learn
This advanced workshop will help you:
- Recognition of markers of transference and countertransference
- Identify involuntary enactments as they unfold in couples therapy
- Understanding of the attachment significance of such enactment
- Understand your own emotional responses as personal and clinical data
- How our own normativity or diversity can activate our client’s attachment patterns
- How to avoid being pulled into the couple’s cycle
- Transform therapist-client enactments into corrective emotional experiences for the couple
- Turning a therapist-client tango into a partner tango
- Maintain therapeutic presence under relational pressure
This is a highly experiential training, including:
- Attachment theory understanding
- Case-based teaching
- Working with a buddy on your own clinical countertransference responses
- Role plays to practice dealing with involuntary enactments
Who This Is For
- EFCT therapists who have completed an Externship
Outcomes
By the end of the day, you will be able to:
- Stay grounded during emotionally complex interactions
- Use countertransference as a precise clinical instrument
- Navigate involuntary enactments with more confidence and clarity
- Deepen the therapeutic process without losing direction
Presenter
Dr Thomas Dellmann has a Doctorate in Counselling and has published five papers in peer reviewed journals.
He has been an ICEEFT certified EFT therapist since 2017 and supervisor since 2022 and runs a busy private practice. Thomas has given guest lectures at several universities, provided Masterclasses for couples counsellors and run EFT supervision groups.
He has a special interest in Self-of-therapist issues and how to work with them.
Reserve Your Place
Spaces are limited to ensure depth of learning and interaction.
Investment
$280