The Neurobiology of Transference

Understanding transference in terms of neurobiological mechanisms has been an area of interest throughout the last decade. The newly developed methods of neuroscience, such as neuroimaging and molecular neurobiology, help explain a neurobiological base for biological correlates of the mental process described in psychoanalytic theory. In this review, we present an hypothesis about neurobiology of transference, with the help of other previously proposed mechanisms such as neurobiology of attachment, pattern completion, memory systems, repetition compulsion, and neurobiology of psychotherapy.