Hello Jeff

Truth is, if we knew them personally, the transference wouldn't be there so powerfully, and we couldn't do this work. The frame needs to be that way to enable healing but I hear how painful it is for you.

All I can do is assure you that it does get worked through and gradually the transference becomes resolved. Then the love you feel will be more inline with a comfortable adult love, rather than the desperate and frightening feelings we experience when we are intouch with infant survival/attachment needs and fear of annihilation.

I remember saying to my therapist it would feel easier if my own mother died than her - what you are feeling is absolutely normal.

Fortunately (not for her though!) my therapist has been through it too - so she is able to understand how painful it is - especially the longing that you describe.
Thank you, Moonlitsky, for explaining transference so well. I have a question about what you posted above. WHY do we need the transference to do the work in therapy? WHY does the frame need to be that way to enable healing? Not everyone goes through this "agony" of love for their Ts, yet they are helped by their Ts. What good is it for me to care so much about my T, and want her to be with me forever, and all the rest of the feelings?
Hang in there Jeff

I can't get the quotes right. Sorry. The following was written by Moonlitsky, not me. Thanks, Moon!

She will never be my friend because I need her to be my therapist. The therapeutic relationship I have with her goes deeper than any friendship ever could and I will fight to preserve it, as would she. I once fantasied that I wanted to know all about her and her private life - that has changed as i realised I probably know her deeper and more inbtimately than I could as a friend, without needing to know anything else. She has given so much to me - her love, her commitment and her care - I don't need to know the facts of her life because i know I am wanted and special whoever else may be in her life - it has taken many years for me to get to that place - to know I am loved and she has space for me - that others in her life don't wipe me out. Infact, she practices from home, and I do actually know alot about her just from going there so often - it's like a second home to me!

Much as you describe, I would describe my time in therapy with her as a love affair. The first love affair we ever have is at mother's breast - it is the blueprint for all the intimate relationships we have in the future. If it doesn't go right we instinctively seek others to meet those unmet needs. This is where a good therapist comes into play. My therapist has allowed me to attach and depend on her and then to work through all that happened to me as a baby and child. It has been like a love affair with fights and making up - the ruptures and repair that are therapy. She has allowed me to get to the deepest and darkest recesses of my psyche, stayed close by when it got messy and has loved me like no one ever did. She hasn't been afraid to show me herself and has lain herself vulnerable for me. I love her for that. She has given me a gift like I have never had and slowly I am healing. It is a grieving for all I never had. She is being internalised so eventually I will be able to 'leave home' and go it alone - but I know she will always be there and we will always be in touch - but never as friends. (In there too is the realisation that the therapist can never be the mother we never had - we have to grieve for that too).

It sounds like you still have some way to go, which is why the thought of leaving therapy is so agonising. I once heard a little boy say he was never going to leave home because he was going to marry mummy. I see you perhaps in that (oedipal perhaps?) place with your therapist. It has to be worked with and felt in many different ways - you will get there and the dependancy will lessen to a more comfortable place.

I wonder if knowing her private life feels it would bring you to a more even footing with her? Fact is that isn true - it would bust the transference and likely ruin the therapy - and ultimately the fantasy would be destroyed and the reality could be a disaster - much as when a therapist acts out in the erotic transference and has sex with a patient - the child part of the patient - agony. So allow yourself the fantasies, speak them, understand them, feel them but know that what we want isn't always what we need.

Now, for me, it's not the nstural ending of therapy I fear but a premature ending that terrifies me.

Hope that isn't too rambly - I am tired and off to bed now so may not be too coherent!!

Take good care

Moon