Transference and Counter-transference

I've just been writing a few lines about the above subjects in response to some training questions. I'm not going to repeat what I wrote here but "it makes you think, doesn't it?". In this case what it makes me think about is, the way, we react to people:

• Based not on what they are, but on who they remind us of,
• Based on the role we've put them in,
• Based on the way we think they are acting towards us, or the way we expect them to act.

The terminology used to describe these phenomena can be confusing, and downright strange, but there is no doubt in my mind that they partly explain some behaviour I have seen in myself and others.