Mentoring Program Chair Mentors play important roles in the personal and professional development of counseling students and novice counselors. According to Kohut, infants being life feeling undifferentiated from their parents and guardians. In other words, children use their caregivers to perform psychological functions that they are unable to perform themselves. For example, children rely on their father and mothers to calm and soothe their fears and anxieties.
Children seek to meet early developmental needs in three types of selfobject relationships.
As a result of inadequate parenting, however, three common transference phenomena emerge within mentoring relationships to satisfy unmet early developmental needs. Consequently, talented individuals may be more apt to seek mentoring relationships that use mentors as selfobjects. In these mentoring alliances, counselor trainees and neophytes may find counseling professionals and experts who meet all three selfobject needs to varying degrees. Each selfobject transference is intended to be temporary and transitory in order to facilitate rather than frustrate personal and professional development. Understanding the developmental needs of college students in mentoring relationship with professors.