ABSTRACT
The Transference Hypothesis (TH) is employed as a vehicle to create a 'safety zone' between therapist and patient. This will be accomplished by teaching patients to discriminate the ways hurtful significant others reacted to them contrasted to the salubrious responses of the practitioner. The formulation of the TH after session two affords a case conceptualizing strategy that informs practitioners how to counter-condition the behavioral consequences of toxic significant others. Cognitive Behavioral Analysis System of Psychotherapy (CBASP) assumes that three things must happen before progress can be made: first, the etiology of the fear-avoidance patterns must be made explicit, second, clinicians must make explicit the hurtful domain consequences maintaining the core fear, and finally, the actual interpersonal core fear must be made explicit in the TH statement. CBASP clinicians select the most salient domain and construct a TH to modify the core fear associated with that area.
