Whenever I read posts where people talk about maternal transference, I always feel baffled. I can think of one T in particular that I had that was much older than me at the time - closer to grandmother age.

I absolutely adored her, but I don't know if I had any kind of transference with her. I didn't think about her excessively outside of sessions. I was interested whenever she mentioned any personal details about her life, but I didn't try to find out more about her. I mostly just thought she was delightful and so talented.

I have talked to my sister about how she has felt about her therapists, and it's similar to my own experience. We had a mother who took very good care of our material needs but wasn't emotionally nurturing.

We pretty much knew better than to ask for this kind of nurturing, because we weren't going to get it and we very often would get anger and an emotional tirade, so I suppose we learned to try not to seem to need nurturing.

The therapist that I see now is several years younger than I am, and I am fine with her being younger. She's very talented and we "click".

She does "make" me address feelings that I have about my childhood issues with my mother. I say "make" - that's not exactly true. It's more like she persuades me during the session and I get brave enough to probe those feelings and experiences with her help. I experience the T more as a guide when exploring those feelings, though.

I suppose my not understanding the maternal transference issue makes me wonder if I just block any possibility of maternal feelings for anyone, because I don't trust that those types of feelings and needs will ever be met..

I'm just throwing this out here to see what people think.