Comprehensive exams for Mental Health Q 142
Katrina, a newly admitted is extremely hostile toward a staff member she has just met, without apparent reason. According to Freudian theory, the nurse should suspect that the client is experiencing which of the following phenomena?
A. Intellectualization
B. Transference
C. Triangulation
D. Splitting
Correct Answer: B. Transference
Transference is the unconscious assignment of negative or positive feelings evoked by a significant person in the client’s past to another person. Transference occurs when a person redirects some of their feelings or desires for another person to an entirely different person. Transference can also happen in a healthcare setting. For example, transference in therapy happens when a patient attaches anger, hostility, love, adoration, or a host of other possible feelings onto their therapist or doctor. Therapists know this can happen. They actively try to monitor it.
Option A: Intellectualization is a defense mechanism in which the client avoids dealing with emotions by focusing on facts. The development of patterns of excessive thinking or over-analyzing, which may increase the distance from one’s emotions. For example, someone who is diagnosed with a terminal illness does not show emotion after the diagnosis is given but instead starts to research every source they can find about the illness.
Option C: Triangulation refers to conflicts involving three family members. Triangulation or triangling is defined in the AAMFT Family Therapy Glossary as the “process that occurs when a third person is introduced into a dyadic relationship to balance either excessive intimacy, conflict, or distance and provide stability in the system” (Evert et al. 1984 p. 32).
Option D: Splitting is a defense mechanism commonly seen in clients with personality disorder in which the world is perceived as all good or all bad. Failing to reconcile both positive and negative attributes into a whole understanding of a person or situation, resulting in all-or-none thinking. Splitting is commonly associated with a borderline personality disorder.