I've had deep transference, inner child problems from a lot of early child abuse, and I feel that my progress in therapy with my current therapist is as much from the healing relationship as from any intellectual learning. From what I've read, the healing is mainly via the working through of the patient/therapist interaction. But the good-enough therapist does guide this to happen in a balanced healthy way.

But a problem I'm having is from T being so undefensive, so un-hungup on childish dependencies that she has difficulty experiencing what I find so loathesome and scary about it. I have trouble saying any kind of mushy, clingy, babyish wishes and can't even speak them to let my T know they are hard to talk about. She can't imagine someone could have that fear, as she probably didn't have that to deal with when she was little. But I think many here have trouble with the dependency, mushy, transference talk. Yet all that is what got many of us in trouble when parents and care-givers were cruel, harsh, ridiculing, until we got a serious hang-up about trusting and sharing feelings. That all crosses over into marriage and friendships later. I'm struggling hard with it, and I believe it helps when the therapist is comfortable with it.