Posted by deborah anne lott on July 28, 2005, at 22:09:00
In reply to Re: Lott: Question about recovering from transference, posted by LittleGirlLost on July 28, 2005, at 12:40:33
Little girl lost asks if intense transference is a "good or bad thing." I don't think it's inherently either -- it's always what you and your therapist are able to make of it. IF the therapist is encouraging the client to have unrealistic feelings by being seductive, or not directly talking about the client's feelings, etc., that is a bad thing. If the therapist is taking too much pleasure in being the object of the client's adoration, that is a bad thing. Intense transference is good if it becomes a gateway for the client's understanding herself in therapy, changing what she wants to change, and moving forward in her life outside the room. Intense transference that goes on for years and doesn't seem to be leading anywhere other than to more and more intense feelings doesn't seem very productive to me. But the client also has to take some responsibility for resolving it by being absolutely honest with the therapist about what she's feeling and how intense and scary it is. The worst situation, of course, is when the client tells the therapist, the therapist doesn't know how to handle it, the client can't leave the therapy because she has these intense feelings, and the cycle goes on and on . . . . As clients we may need to do our own work outside of therapy to try to understand why we have such intense feelings and what is really behind them. For some of us who had less than great parenting, we're going to have intense feelings in therapy -- there's no getting around it -- and we really need to try to understand what's going on and not just lose ourselves in those feelings. It's important to try to clarify whether the feelings are triggered by the situation -- its time-limits, the intimacy of the subjects discussed, our emotional vulnerability, or if the therapist is doing something to encourage them, like being seductive,etc. When I was first in college, I went into every class half-ready to fall in love with my male professor. Having had a very charismatic and dynamic father who had a psychotic break when I was 15 and never fully recovered, the situation of a male authority figure lecturing was already ripe with emotional and erotic possibility to me, and the acceptance of an authority figure seemed to promise something very symbolic. At the same time, I was ready to hate them and take them on for everything they said that didn't seem exactly right to me. And I always half-expected them to go crazy and turn on me. And of course, it being the 70s, a few teachers took me up on my willingness and we had "affairs" that always ended badly. Each time I fell in love with a professor I was SURE it was because HE was IT, HE WAS MY SOULMATE, THIS WASN'T LIKE THE OTHER TIMES, etc. I didn't see, as I see now, that this was my pattern, my need, and that given the least encouragement I would throw myself into love. (And usually out of it and into disappointment and even contempt.) Now I can often see my own students idealizing me, refusing to see that I'm just another lowly struggling, little-girl-lost human being. They need me to say the right thing, do the right thing to correct symbolically something that happened to them long ago. Sometimes these feelings motivate them to study harder, do better work, reach their potential. Then they can be a good thing. If I'm not careful, though, these feelings could also turn destructive. So it's up to me (and to them) to understand them and turn them into good. I guess though I'm more worried about people who can't feel anything, who can't muster any intensity about anything, than about people who feel too much. What does everyone else think?
poster:deborah anne lott
thread:534787
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20050725/msgs/535092.html