Quote:
Originally Posted by SkyscraperMeow
The problem with 'loving' )ist is that even what you do know about him is only a fraction of the story. There's also the fact that the therapeutic relationship is designed so the client gets all the support and has to do no work for the therapist. The therapist must always be in a therapeutic frame of mind, have positive, unconditional regard, etc.
Who wouldn't love someone who appeared that way?
But the thing is, real love is when you pick someone up from the airport at 2 am and they're grumpy and they snap about wanting noodles and then they fart and it's all gross and you drive them home and make sympathetic noises while they finally get something to eat and spend an hour talking about how horrible their boss was on that business trip. Real love is when you still love someone even when it's all about them sometimes. And therapy is never, ever, all about the therapist. So how would you know?
That's not the same as the self disclosure you claim is the same as knowing someone. It's one thing for someone to say 'I don't like flying'. It's quite different to have been the one coaxing them onto the plane and holding their hand for a flight. Clients are never there for their therapists, so any love they feel is idealized.
The only kind of love a client can really feel is an infantile regression of love for a caretaker figure (because that is the only role a therapist can hope to be realistically cast in, and even then, it's a bit of a stretch.) That isn't adult love. That's desire, and yearning and longing, but it's not the sort of love that real romance is based on.
I also think it's kind of dangerous to confuse having one's needs tended to without the need for reciprocation as some kind of ideal love state. Because that's not what happens in real relationships, and if you try to measure real relationships against therapy, you're going to have a bad time.
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This is the most mature, realistic post I have yet to read on Transference on Psych Central.
Love is never painful, that's how you know that "loving" your therapist is actually desire and or infatuation, and not love. (I'm not saying relationships can't be painful at times, of course they are. I'm talking about LOVE.)
Yes, you can love the person--what you know of the person, that is, because truthfully, no one knows his or her therapist (unless the therapist had no boundaries whatever).
Thank you for your response.
I see many people have left disparaging remarks about your comment, but the truth is that the truth hurts.
I love my therapist because she is the first person I ever met who accepts me unconditionally, has great respect for me, and is patient and always kind. I THOUGHT I was falling in love with her, but then I realized I was getting infatuated with an idealized version of someone I didn't really know. Plus, during therapy sessions it is her JOB to be on her best behaviour in terms of being the empathetic blank slate that she is (I'm glad to say she's not a Freudian therapist; she's not a total blank slate).
I'm not in love with my therapist.
I love that she is showing me through her words and actions what I NEED TO DO: learn to love and accept MYSELF unconditionally, with great respect, patience, and kindness, like she does. ONLY THEN will I be able to have a mature, balanced loving relationship.
I also recognized through my infatuation with her that I was perpetuating a habit I created as a kid, a defense mechanism to shield me from the pain that the infatuation masked; the pain from my childhood sexual abuse.
I always got infatuated with people I couldn't have so I didn't have to look at all the pain a relationship would bring up.
So I would seriously ask ANYONE who is experiencing transference to talk openly and honestly about the transference because it's surfacing for a reason.
You all deserve to know why.
Again, thank you for your mature comment.
It's painful, I'm sure, for many to read, but it is the truth.
