what good is transference?

i guess there are many different kinds of love...

Kohut (sorry to go on) talks about how people have three different (though related) needs with respect to emotional intimacy:

- idealising. feeling safe and secure in the presence of a benevolent and powerful (or all good) other.
- twinning. feeling like an acceptable part of humanity because of how another person is like you in certain respects.
- mirroring. another person taking pride in your achievements and looking up to you and admiring you.

and peoples needs change at various points though most people are either primarily need someone to take the idealising transference or someone to take the mirroring transference. depends which need was frustrated most as a kid...

i guess idealising transference is most important to me. sometimes that can turn into an erotic transference (maybe that is what you meant by love). i'm ever so grateful that i don't find my therapist particularly physically attractive (though i do find his body type fairly attractive in the sense that he is taller than me and fairly solid and i'm well above average height for a female. though perhaps the solidity comes from idealisation, i'm not so sure lol).

i've read a bit of stuff on erotic transference (so yes it happens often enough for people to write about it). sometimes therapists don't like to talk about it / acknowledge it because they feel uncomfortable and there are all these worries about 'major league malpractice' (i.e., sleeping with clients). but more stuff is coming out on it now.

one theory was that erotic transference was a way of regaining control over the therapist (because the therapist has more power than the client in virtue of the nature of the relationship. i.e., the client has to be vulnerable and talk about their issues whereas the therapist does not).

another theory was that it was part of the idealisation.

i guess both could be true at different times. i fantasise about my therapist a little... but if he tried anything IRL i'd run away screaming (all the way to report him for misconduct). but... i'm fairly sure he is trustworthy in that respect...

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sunrise said:
transference: I have pretty much only positive with T. I think.... What are some examples of negative transference? I know I've never been angry with him. But what are some non-anger, negative transference examples?

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Although I didn't include it in the quote, what you wrote about the feelings towards your T were beautifully stated. It's exactly what I was trying to get at.

As far as non-anger negative transference. The example I think of has to do with rejection. I believe I transfer onto my T the way I feel about others who I feel have rejected me. Sometimes I will come in, arms crossed, coat still on, one word answers. I don't do this because I am angry at him. I do it because I want to regress to the point in therapy in which I wasn't open, and wasn't making any progress. I see progress as "bad" because if I make progress, then I will "get better" and he will terminate me, thus becoming another person who will reject me. I hope that helped.

yeah. hate. avoidance. anger. withdrawal.

defences...

(projection, denial, projective identification etc are different ways of avoiding / withdrawing from t)

also... devaluation (opposite of idealisation).
such feelings as:

condescending / seeing t as imcompetent or insignificant or ineffectual. powerless.

(these are all meant to be defences i think... but then... i've heard that postitive transference (idealising) is a defence too. i'm not sure about that... dunno... some theorists say that idealisation is a good thing because haveing faith in the therapists benevolence and power can help motivate the client to look at the hard stuff)

Hmmmm, pinksoil and alex, I'm not sure any of your negative transference examples is resonating with me. I have sometimes said something to T that indicates to him that I am minimizing my worthwhileness (is that a word?) as a person, or minimizing my feelings as unimportant or a target for being rejected or stepped on. He says this is because I relate that way to others from the past and present and he asks me to stop it with him, lol. Once he drew my attention to it I have tried not to do it when I am with him and ascribe more value to myself. Is my doing that with him (devaluing myself) a type of negative transference?

i don't think so.

i've heard... that negative experiences can be relived in a couple of different ways.

one is to transfer the qualities onto the t. so... when you feel worthless (devalue yourself) do you experience your therapist as trying to be punative or to belittle you or to minimise your thoughts or your feelings or rejecting of them?

if you experience your t in that way then that would be a negative transference.

othertimes... instead of transfering those qualities onto your t you can attribute those qualities to you. if people in your past belittled you / were punative etc then you can internalise that (as a 'negative introject') so that your superego has those qualities. hence you can feel worthless etc because of all the things your superego says ('you worthless piece of crap' etc etc).

i don't think that latter counts as a negative transference.

i guess i'm all jumbled up and confused between:
- negative introject (so i feel really ashamed and embarrassed about telling my t certain things because i give myself a hard time about having those feelings etc)
- negative transference (so i think he is incompetent / can't handle the nasty stuff inside me / will fragment if i share too much etc)
- positive transference (so i think he is just wonderful)

part of me plays the role of the negative introject...
and part of me holds the negative transference...
and another part of me holds the positive transference...

and i'm just confused / ambivalent really.

i've heard that sometimes people can have an intense positive transference and really struggle with shame around such feelings as anger and the like. so those hostile feelings get repressed. sometimes it can be about fearing that one will destroy the therapist or be rejected by the therapist if those negative feelings are expressed. so the person represses anger and the like and maybe hauls in the negative introject to help keep the anger and the like in check / repressed.

but that eventually the time will come when the frustration / rage / anger surfaces. and t will be experienced as sadistic or demeaning or incompetent or whatever. and that can be worked through.

if you weren't allowed to express negative emotions as a kid then that can take a while.

someone or other said... that part of working through the oedipus complex (which occurs at a LATER stage than the pre oedipal security issues and seperation individuation) is that one tries (figuratively) to kill the parent and... that it is important to see the parent survive that onslaught.

otherwise one can worry that all the stuff inside one... simply can't be tolerated or lived through by another human being (hence one must repress it and live in shame that it is there and that one is so unacceptable).

resonated with me slightly... but who knows ;-)

oh... and that sometimes... idealisation... can be a defence against anger.

i found something online about anger and this therapist was talking about his interaction with his 6 year old daughter. they were on holiday together (on some islands somewhere) and he wanted to go visit all the beaches and explore and she wanted to stay in the hotel room and play with her dolls. for three days they sort of fought about it. she refused to comprimise. if he made her go with him (after allowing her to play for a while) she would complain the whole time.

then he said... when they were in the car and she was being sullen... he said 'i love you very much and nothing will change that but sometimes i hate you'. and he looked at her and smiled to see she got it. and she said 'sometimes i hate you too daddy'. then she smiled. and then... she stopped complaining.

not quite sure what to make of that but... seems anger / hate / frustration is a normal part of the human condition and there are appropriate ways of expressing / communicating that that can increase intimacy (and decrease shame and the like). bizzare, huh. i think it takes a while (and a lot of hurt and confusion and repression and explosion etc along the way) to get to that...

Hi everyone .. i've been following this thread, but i'm still not quite sure i understand properly

See I became (and still am very) attached to my house mother at my boarding school - although i am at university now - and these feelings are not going away, infact they are becomming more pronounced and it upsets me daily that i do not have the same sort of contact with her. I never got along with my mom so i always saw her as that "motherly figure". Is this transference? And if it is .. what does that mean exactly? How do i make it stop? Should i bring it up with my T? .. sorry for all the questions, and if you have to repeat yourself just guide me in the direction to where this might be answered.

Thanks so much, and i appreciate any feedback.
Jacq

one take on erotic transference:

http://www.guidetopsychology.com/ero...ansference.htm

hey. yup, that sounds like transference to me :-)

yeah, it sounds like a great thing to be talking to your therapist about :-)

re: what it means... i imagine this person has become an 'idealised (m)other' who met some of your emotional needs that weren't adequately met when you were a kid.

regarding how you make it stop...

the usual notion is that talking to your therapist about how you feel about this person... about how your mother never met those needs... should help.

that is the idea anyway.

Thanks Alexandra ... i guess i'll bring it up with my T! Thanks for the info, and the links!

Bad Transferance: I talked to my T a few months ago about my fear that she was going to abandon me. I knew that it was irrational and couldn't seem to get my mind to stop thinking in this way. I would say that that was bad transferance. My first T made me think of a mother figure. I caught myself wanting to make her proud of me at times. I thought this could be a good transferance because it might encourage me to work on things. But, it unnerved me because it wasn't quite "normal" feeling to me.
I think transferance is rather normal in the T-client relationship. The relationship is so intimate and fulfills psychological needs that we can't fulfill for ourselves that "falling in love" with your T would be a good possiblity. When my teacher discussed this, one of my classmates said that the client would have to be messed up. My teacher pointed out the intimacy of the relationship between a T and client. I felt that he should also point out that
Ts fulfill a psychological need that we can't fulfill for ourselves at this time. I NEED my T's positive thinking to help me combat my negative thinking. The need for someone in that way can be mistaken for love.
Take home message: If you experience an intense case of transferance, it's okey. We're more normal than you think!

alex, I'm thinking about some possible answers to the question in the title to this thread:

"What good is transference?"

For me,

transference has been good because

--it has let me feel love/warmth/affection for and from someone, and I haven't felt that for a long time

--it is helping me to learn how to have a healthy/therapeutic relationship; for many years I have experienced only disfunctional ones

--it is helping me resolve needs from my past by letting me project them onto my T and work them out, such as fear of abandonment and fear of confrontation

--it has shown me I can care about someone, that I'm not emotionally dead

and there's probably more...

i guess i just feel...

pain. when i feel his empathy and compassion...

i just feel pain. pain and shame.

but i guess i could talk to him about that.

(((sunrise)))

thanks

Thanks, alex. ((((hugs))))

I also have a list of answers to the question: "What's bad about transference?"

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sunrise said:
Thanks, alex. ((((hugs))))

I also have a list of answers to the question: "What's bad about transference?"

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I could probably take the list of answer of "what's good about transference?" and use them for "what's bad about transference?" I have found that almost everything good about therapy is painful for me at the same time. I'm hoping that in the long run, I will be able to hold the good things and not feel the hurt that goes along with them.

i think transference neurosis is just an intense transference response. most people grant that transference is a feature of most of our relationships. transference neurosis is when the therapist becomes the most emotionally significant person in your life. can lead to obsessional thoughts or very frequent fantasies or whatever.

Unfortunately, I have transference neurosis. You don't want it trust me. I am very attached and dependent on my T. I don't want that to change but then I do. It's a never ending cycle so far....thanks for posting the links. I plan to check them out.