Comprehensive exams for Mental Health Q 213

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Anthony is very hostile toward one of the staff for no apparent reason. He is manifesting:

  

     A. Splitting

     B. Transference

     C. Countertransference

     D. Resistance

    

    

Correct Answer: B. Transference

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Transference is a positive or negative feeling associated with a significant person in the client’s past that are unconsciously assigned to another. 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.

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Option A: Splitting is a defense mechanism commonly seen in a client 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 borderline personality disorder.

Option C: Countertransference is a phenomenon where the nurse shifts feelings assigned to someone in her past to the patient. Countertransference, which occurs when a therapist transfers emotions to a person in therapy, is often a reaction to transference, a phenomenon in which the person in treatment redirects feelings for others onto the therapist.

Option D: Resistance is the client’s refusal to submit himself to the care of the nurse. Clients are sometimes resistant because the counselor is asking them to deal with an undesired agenda. Resistance means we’re working on the wrong problem, a problem that the client doesn’t care to work on. Counselors need to connect with the client in order to find the right problem.

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