Blank slate/real relationship?

I'm pondering over some things Artimis said in the thread about saying I love you. About how we don't really know our therapists, and that what we are feeling with them is a reflection of ourselves. I have angry feelings towards my T as well as postiive feelings too. Is this anger nothing about her, all about me? I feel angry in direct response to the things she says. Also I strangely feel deep postive feelings too (don't like to call them love). On the one hand the blank slate theory would say these feelings are all my own transferred feelings. On the other hand there is surely some real relationship going on in there too? She is a person who cares, and looks at me with deep caring eyes at times, she sometimes shares a few anecdotes about herself. There is surely some meeting of minds when we discuss things?

Any thoughts?

I'd say it has to be a real relationship on some level for therapy to work. In some ways (and I could be dead wrong, but this is just my current gut feeling) I sort of feel as though a lot of the boundaries and things are plausible deniability so a therapist doesn't have to reciprocate.

I mean, if it was really a blank slate (as I understand it, the old Freudian therapists used to sit behind the patient and say absolutely nothing) then yeah, okay, maybe it would all be projection on the client's part.

But if you're looking someone in the eye, and having a meaningful conversation with them, then I think there has to be some kind of real relationship happening there. And it would have to go both ways on some level, otherwise you'd sense closedness in that person.

I am utterly confused about this too.
My feelings towards T can be completely disproportionate (I can be intensely angry over almost nothing or feel completely in love with him after a good session) and this sort of suggests transference, yet I do feel I know him quite well, he is quite open so I feel some of this must be genuine affection for him.
I try to imagine how I would feel about him if I had met him in a different context, but it's impossible to say.
I have also spent months thinking that I couldn't work through my feelings for him in therapy because he is uncomfortable with my feelings. It is only now that I am seeing another T about this attachment that I realise it is actually me who is uncomfortable talking about the feelings. I even tried to project that discomfort on to new T!
I truly think that these feelings towards our therapists can be both; I love him as a person, for who he is, but I know these feelings have only emerged because he has fulfilled needs for me that have been unmet throughout my life. So it is transference, but that doesn't mean it isn't genuine love.

What you said here really gets to the crux of the matter, I think. I think a non-genuine feeling would be one that the therapist had done nothing to elicit, that is, if, say, you felt they were evil because they sharpened a pencil because in the past you experienced trauma whenever pencils were sharpened, then yes, that would be transference.

But, if a therapist fills a deep need that you have, I don't see how that is transference. That is a real and present actual event which is happening, and to deny the feelings that arise, or call them something other than what they are seems to be an effort to diminish them and maybe protect the therapist, possibly to the detriment of the client (who is basically gaslit about their experience.)

What is the definition of really knowing someone? Do you have to know all the details of a person's life to truly know them?

For me that's a complicated answers which I don't feel like anaylizing right now as it would way to long of a post.

But I feel I do know my T, in essence/spirit? I do love her and care about her. She does irritate me, upset me, and frustrate me sometimes. She also makes me feel comforted, safe, and even can make me laugh. She has feelings too. It's not fake. Sure some of it is me reflecting? onto her, but I am still able to see her as her own person.

I like my T as a person. The things she has disclosed are traits I admire and things I genuinely like about her. That being said I do tend to project feelings in that sometimes I think she's mad at me or hates me and it's the shame I feel, not anything she is really feeling.

I think it's a combination of both, just like irl, but probably more opportunity for projection because of the sensitive topics than irl where we tend to be more withholding and/or armored for protection. I think my therapist is genuine and human in our sessions; but at the same time, I don't really know her. She might be kind and attentive during session, then go home and rip the cable company a new one (well, maybe that's a bad example...who doesn't lose it over Comcast?).

At any rate, something real does exist there. But also, some projection.

I've really wondered about this before myself. I've decided for now, I love my therapist because he fills a certain need for me, to feel cared about, to be with someone safe, and he is also someone I like. My therapist though is not a blank slate. I don't think I know it all about him, but I know quite a bit. He might actually talk more than me in our sessions, I'm not great at talking. I think the problem with the "projecting myself" theory is that I don't love everyone. I don't even love everyone who is kind to me. It's impossible to pinpoint who I will love and who not, and the ones I love are rare, like maybe only 10 so far in my whole life. I work with a lot of nice people I know next to nothing about, they are perfect blank slates, and I don't think much about them one way or the other. Conversely I work with a boss I happen to know has the exact opposite politics and religion as me, and I find myself oddly very attracted to him, even though I know he is nothing like me, but he is a sexy man. I've had therapists before I didn't love, who were blank slates. I don't know... I just don't see as much rhyme or reason to it. Some of the things I love about my therapist are definitely things I'm not too, like I'm oddly attracted to his Jewishness, and I'm not even a little Jewish.

Just to add: there are different definitions of love too. I don't love my T like she's a family member who I put up with because they're family, like my fiance who I intimately love, like my dogs who are like my children. It's different. All I know is that I care about my T beyond the care I have for general people. I put her needs before my wants (not above my own needs). I care about her even when I'm pissed at her. I care about her even with all her imperfections and I'm not simply dismissing the imperfections. And no matter what she would/could/will do to me, I choose to still care about her (though depending on what it is I might not be able to keep her in my life). To me, that is love. To others, that might just be "care".

It is extremely complicated. I think I have just re-defined my answer to the question "how do I know when I'm done with therapy?" it will be when I can either explain the relationship, or don't care anymore that I can't. Hmmm. Must think on that.

That was me trying to work things out in my own head, definitely not an attempt at a definitive answer! it is SO complicated, isn't it, this relationship we have with our t's? My t used that analogy a long time ago something about she holds up a clean mirror or something that reflects back to me my Self, but w/out all the negative filters that I put on my own viewing of myself, or something like that.

But I think there is some real relationship going on there too, it just has different boundaries or confines or something than any other relationship we have. I'm so confused about it sometimes. My t and I are going to be talking about this stuff on 12/31. You'd think after 3 years I'd have a better understanding of the relationship. But, sadly, I don't.

I was feeling in session today that it is really sadistic to have a relationship where someone is nice and caring to you, who listens to you but they are out of bounds and unreachable. It is not a mutual relationship. I will never know my t as a person. I understand the reason for and use of the structure, boundaries, etc. for therapy to happen but I whole thing just feels like a cruel game to me right now. I feel like a failure for not being able to exist in said relationship. I told my t that today.

It feels cruel and the desire is always for more but I think T is better as my therapist than anyone else. Yes we probably would have been good friends and yes I wish she weren;t out of bounds to know but T is better in my life as a therapist more than a friend or anything else. I wouldn't want to move through this process with anyone else.

Just an anecdote about the whole therapist-as-mirror thing: in one of my very last sessions with previous T I remember her smiling at me in a particular way and it seemed to me that I was seeing my smile on her face. I loved her in that moment, yet I was aware that I was seeing a piece of myself somehow.

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But maybe we wouldn't like our T's outside therapy? I remember a poster here saying that her T kept kept in touch with her after and she really wasn't the same person out of the therapeutic relationship.

How did she respond? My T. once said we were friends. I asked her how she could say such a thing when we can't be friends. She said well we are in therapy an hour a week. I was mad for 2 days about it. Because, I want that more than anything and felt she was making light of it. However, I think it was a little bit of her countertransference as we get along really well and have similar personalities. So, I never brought it up. Probably should have...

about the feeling like a failure part she said "that's not good" And then she said that my difficulties with this relationship tell her how much I want a close mutual relationship in real life. And I would have had the same reaction you did if she ever referred to us as friends!