Google “calling the teacher ‘mom,’” and you will find a deluge of pained or embarrassed faces across various memes. This shared humor is a prime example of transference. Transference is a fundamental principle of psychotherapy, which occurs when a person unconsciously projects attitudes and feelings from past relationships into the present moment (Britzman and Pitt 1996). Although identified with therapy, transference shapes many teaching elements, including how and why educators teach (Weiss 2022) and how we respond and listen to students (Baumlin and Weaver 2000). Even Freud noted the presence of transference in teaching, remarking how “these men [the teachers] became our substitute fathers . . . We transferred to them the respect and expectations attaching to the omniscient father of our childhood, and then we began to treat them as we treated our own fathers at home” (Freud 1914, 242–4; Weiss 2022).
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