Transferring Emotions - A social practice?

This interdisciplinary study aims to interpret the concept of ‘transference’ and particularly ‘transference of emotions’ in the light of practice theory. The idea of transference was made prominent as an important aspect of human interaction in general, and psychotherapeutic interaction in particular, by Sigmund Freud (1912/1959). Since then it was used, tested and refined by many scholars and is effectively utilized in psychodynamic therapies and psychoanalysis. It roughly denotes the process by which previously developed and established interaction patterns with significant others are transferred to new interactions and relationships. These patterns include expectations, motivations, and especially emotions. Experimental research has for example shown that affects that are associated with a significant other representation are transferred to a new target person when the target person resembles the significant other (Andersen & Baum, 1994) and that the representationconsistent affect is even reflected in a person’s facial affective expressions (Andersen, Reznik, & Manzella, 1996). We hold and want to demonstrate that the concept of transference can not only be utilized in psychotherapy, but also in sociology. We will, thus, look at processes of transference from a practice theoretical perspective. Based on previous experimental research and with a special focus on ‘transference of emotions’ we show that transference denotes a socialization process in which emotional states and responses are unconsciously acquired, embodied, and reproduced throughout the individual’s life-course. These ‘emotional narratives’ signal a general ‘emotional sense’ that shapes social interactionmuch in the same way as the ‘practical sense’ that was identified by Bourdieu. It is, in other words, an unconscious and habitual emotional pattern in social interaction, that is learned and embodied by an individual in the course of its socialization. Practice theory and the sociology of e