Transference

Transference is the name Dr Kamal Abdic gives to Megan Hipwell’s desire to be with him, and a concept Rachel Watson later invokes when explaining Megan’s feelings to Scott Hipwell. In the novel, it offers a clinical account of attachment within therapy, but its calm terminology does not make the feelings feel unreal or inconsequential to the people experiencing them.

Definition and Therapeutic Boundary

When Megan tells Dr Kamal Abdic that she wants to be with him, he identifies her feelings as transference. He explains that such feelings happen from time to time and says that they can happen to him, too; he also apologizes for not having introduced the topic in their previous session. His explanation places the disclosure within a recognizable therapeutic framework, while pointing to a boundary that needs to be named and handled.

Later, Rachel describes the concept to Scott as a situation in which a patient develops—or thinks they develop—feelings for a therapist. In her account, the therapist is supposed to resist those feelings and explain that they are not real. The distinction matters: Rachel presents transference not as proof that an affair reflects a patient’s unhappiness with a partner, but as a possible explanation for how feelings can arise in therapy.

Megan’s Experience of the Explanation

The clinical label does not settle the emotional meaning of Megan’s confession. She feels that Dr Kamal Abdic’s explanation makes what she has disclosed sound banal and bloodless. His naming of transference may make the situation intelligible as a therapeutic phenomenon, but to Megan it risks diminishing the intensity of her desire and leaving her uncertain whether he feels anything in return.

The scene therefore holds two perspectives in tension: the therapist’s effort to frame the disclosure through a professional concept, and the patient’s experience of that framing as an inadequate response to a personal declaration. The concept identifies a boundary, but naming the boundary does not erase the hurt or uncertainty produced by the exchange.

Rachel’s Use of the Concept

Rachel carries the term into her conversation with Scott, who is struggling to understand whether Megan was unhappy in their marriage and whether her affair might explain that unhappiness. Rachel suggests that Megan’s feelings for a therapist could instead have been transference, repeating the idea that the therapist should resist them and clarify their status. Scott appears not to be listening closely to her explanation, so the concept does not resolve his distress or his doubts about the marriage.

Rachel’s explanation also connects the idea to her own experience with Dr Kamal Abdic. Talking to him had helped her: she liked him and felt happier. After feeling rejected, she is embarrassed by how she behaved and ashamed that she did not handle the rejection better. Yet she still believes he would help if she returned. Her account makes clear that therapeutic attachment can coexist with real benefit from treatment and with painful feelings about how a boundary is enforced.

Narrative Significance

Across Megan’s disclosure and Rachel’s later explanation, transference becomes both a clinical term and a way characters try to interpret intimacy. For Megan, the label meets a declaration of desire with professional explanation; for Rachel, it becomes language with which to make sense of Megan’s affair and her own attachment to a therapist. The recurrence shows the concept’s double effect: it can make feelings discussable while leaving the person who feels them unconvinced that their emotional reality has been understood.