Why do you think that I don't think? Sure, that has never been a question but super clear and obvious. I would not describe it paternal transference necessarily, I think the kind of "twinship" idea proposed by Kohut is much more accurate. I felt that way with my father some but never as much as with other guys in my adult life, friends, colleagues etc. But yes of course. It did not make my therapy super therapeutic though exactly because it was so familiar and I had experienced so many similar relationships before. That's what I usually describe as not enough useful challenge. Merely great intellectual company I have plenty in my life and have always had, they never really helped much to resolve the things that were problematic for me, in part because we often tend to have the same weaknesses as well.

That guy in the past that I mentioned (that I met in a peer group) was very helpful and I gained a lot from our exchanges. Enough similarity to understand each-other well but also enough differences and he had great discipline and plenty of interesting, challenging questions and suggestions that I considered because they clicked with me. He was also very smart but that's not really why it was so helpful to interact with him, that was just a basal matrix for conversation. He was also not the kind of smart who would get stuck in useless analysis paralysis (like me often enough), more street-smart and very practical. He was one I often saw as a more evolved version of my father, not the therapists I paid. I also told him that quite a few times. My dad and he passed away just a few months apart so I was thinking about all that a lot back then.