I want to add something to my post: what I hope is another piece of the puzzle. I seem to be learning stuff; I hope maybe some more of you may also.

In October of last year I downloaded from the Internet an article that fascinated me, even though I cannot understand much of its detail. If you are interested in or feel you can understand something of the intersection of mathematics and neurobiology, you might download this Adobe Acrobat Reader document:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science...g=search&_
coverDate=09%2F30%2F2003&_sk=996739990&view=c&wchp=dGLbVzb-zSkWz&md5=ff562bf72991de705dadf3fd5fc8a179&ie=/sdarticle.pdf

I think you will have to copy and paste this URL into your browser, and reconnect the two parts, if you want to get the article. I could probably have done better in getting it.

Maybe it would be better to go to http://www.sciencedirect.com/ and search for an article "Is there chaos in the brain?..." by Henri Korn and Philippe Faure.

Basically what I got from the article is that the "hard-wiring" of the brain may be such that it displays the ability to compare present experiences with past ones very, very rapidly. I have read in other places about how this could be an effect of the detailed modes of operations of neurons themselves, in how they "fire" in response not only to incoming sense messages but also to whether other connected neurons are also firing. This enables an organism to remember events in proportion to how significant they were found to be.

In particular, if you have very traumatic experiences at one time, then your brain may, if it sees something that appears to be similar now, react very forcefully and rapidly to signal "danger, danger, maximum alert, panic, panic panic!" The article speculates that this may be an evolutionary advantage to an organism, in that it allows it to react very rapidly to new stimuli and identify them as being similar to ones that it is already familiar with, and react to them strongly. But it also has the disadvantage that it may react to something strongly but mistakenly!

In my case, I suspect that I react to my own therapist's hiding his thought processes (from himself as well as from outsiders) because that is one of the absolutely typical things my mother did. She never admitted actual, genuine thoughts. Coupled with that was the fact that she was liable to punish and beat us children on the basis of her own mistaken perceptions. So when I see someone without clear awareness of their own emotions I fear that they can also beat and punish, maybe without limit.

It is sometimes called transference. Or counter-transference... Or just plain learning...