I think Freud (or some other psychodynamic theorist) thought that adult love was all based on transference. The notion being that we love our parents and then we seek out people later in life who remind us of our parents. I'm not so sure about that, however.

There is a book... I can't remember what it is called. I think it was by Deborah Lott. She was in group therapy and she started meeting with the ladies in the group after therapy for coffee. They started talking about their individual therapy experiences. She was a journalist and so she eventually wrote a book about women in therapy. About transference in particular.

Something she says (and to me, this makes a lot of sense) is that feelings of love for your therapist might be rooted in how they remind you of your parents... But it is also a response to the present encounter. I mean, therapists listen to your most intimate thoughts and feelings. They respond in a caring way. What right minded person wouldn't come to care about someone who responds in such a caring way to us?

I think that a big part of the difference is that we don't know the person outside therapy. With other people in our life we see them at their good times and their bad times. Relationships outside therapy are reciprocal. Our friends and partners care for us, and we care for them. Therapy (by its nature) isn't a reciprocal relationship, however. Therapy is all about us. The focus is on us. As such we don't know what is going on for the therapist and we aren't there for them. We might think we want to be... But that would mean the end of the therapy relationship.

Because we don't know much about them and their life outside therapy we often project things onto them... Because we don't know how well they get on with their partner or their kids or their friends we are likely to generalise from the therapy encounter to how they are all of the time. To think that they must listen to their husband and kids and friends the way they listen to us... But nobody could sustain that for such long periods of time... There is a reason why therapy encounters only go for an hour or so ;-)

I tend to think that my therapist must have perfect relationships. That he extends to his wife the same care he extends to me. I hope he does. But I guess he couldn't do that all the time or he wouldn't be okay in himself to be able to extend that degree of care to his clients. His taking a month off when his wife has a baby gets me thinking he must be perfect with his relationships too... I wonder whether it is his first child or whether it is about making sure the other kids get the care they need through the transition time... Or maybe he is planning on going off fishing ;-)

Maybe he isn't very good in his real world relationships because he expends all his energy caring for his patients...

I have no idea really... But it is fun to think of him as being perfect. To think of him as being omni-caring and I get the opportunity to internalise that selfobject. If I foster idealising transference then that might mean I'm narcissistic and not borderline (aka too ill for self psychology)

(joke)

lol

:-)