How do you respond when someone projects their feelings for someone else onto you? Are you able to avoid colluding with such emotions? Both of these concepts originate with Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic theory, and they are both about redirecting emotions. Transference is when "the client" redirects emotions for another person onto the therapist, whereas countertransference is when the therapist redirects the emotions back onto their client as a result of the initial transfer.