ABSTRACT
Anna Freud discovered that the analyst is often the surface for the client’s projections of childhood relationship experiences. These experiences are re-enacted in the relationship with the analyst, whereby feelings connected with a past caregiver are reproduced as if the analyst were the former care-giver. In the coaching or therapeutic relationship, an initial positive transference is necessary to create a trusting working relationship. In Melanie Klein’s work, introjection is the internalising of object-relations, which are primarily an individual’s relationship experiences with early caregivers. In attachment theory, internal working models represent stored unconscious cumulative relationship experience that controls our expectations and perceptions and creates a certain fundamental pattern that affects all future relationships. Denial and suppression work as defences and are closely linked to projection and splitting. Denial is the refusal to accept reality or an aspect of reality, whereas suppression is understood as a holding off or keeping away the unpleasant aspects.
