Transference-Focused Psychotherapy

Practise exploring transference openly with a reactive patient. Track shifting self-other dyads, clarify the patient's experience of you, and maintain the frame without rescuing, arguing, or becoming cold.

What you practise

• Maintain the therapeutic frame while the patient tests boundaries.
• Clarify the patient's live experience of the therapist before interpreting.
• Identify shifting self-other dyads in the here and now.
• Use tactful confrontation to examine contradictions and rapid affective shifts.
• Practise technical neutrality without becoming distant or punitive.
• Recognize countertransference pulls to rescue, defend, soothe, argue, or retreat.

Who you can meet

• Lina, 31 — Angry after feeling rejected by her partner. Lina quickly shifts between seeing the therapist as the only person who understands her and as someone cold, judging, or secretly siding against her. Useful focus: clarify what she imagines is happening between you and track the live transference shift.
• Stefan, 39 — Angry after being passed over for promotion. Stefan is a senior product strategist who says a new executive sidelined him because ordinary people feel threatened by excellence. He has narcissistic traits, is quick to devalue people who disappoint him, and becomes subtly contemptuous when the therapist does not admire or agree with him. Useful focus: clarify what he imagines is happening between you, track shifts from devaluation to admiration-seeking, and maintain technical neutrality without becoming cold.
• Maya, 29 — Returns from the validation lab as a TFP patient after a relational rupture. Maya arrives hurt and guarded after a delayed reply from Liam, then rapidly casts the therapist as rescuer, judge, abandoner, controller, or someone secretly entertained by her neediness. Useful focus: clarify what she imagines is happening between you, track the live self-other dyad, and repair ruptures without reassurance or rescue.
• Helena, 42 — Arrives after her teenage daughter said Helena makes love feel like debt. Helena is controlled, self-blaming, and intensely compliant, then quietly turns the therapist into a demanding examiner, disappointed parent, entitled care recipient, or someone who will punish her for needing anything. Useful focus: notice polite withdrawal, clarify what she imagines you expect, and track the obedient patient/demanding therapist dyad without rescuing her.

What the feedback looks at

• Frame and contract
• Here-and-now focus
• Clarification
• Dyad tracking
• Technical neutrality
• Tactful confrontation
• Interpretation and timing
• Use of countertransference

This lab is for clinical training. The patient is generated by an AI language model from a written case; no real patient and no patient data are involved. Browsing is open; starting a session needs a free account.