Transference vs Limerence

I've always accepted that the feelings I have for my T are transference.
That's the term everyone uses after all.
Recently I found a term that I think is much more accurate in describing my experience.
That term is Limerence.
Somehow after reading this article, I feel a kind of relief.
Anyone familiar with this?

http://doctorogenki.tripod.com/smartsex/id18.html

I think they're very different. As I understand it, transference isn't about "love" like limerence is; transference is about attributing or transferring feelings one has for a significant other onto the therapist whom one really doesn't "know" and has no outside relationship with. Limerence is the study of "love" and while we "love" our parents when we're children because they are all we have to care for us so the source of all good things, our therapist's listening to us and paying attention to us an hour a week or whatever is not quite that extreme so doesn't naturally cause such an extreme behavior, so some of the limerence is transference but not vice versa. And transference is about all feelings, not just love. You have other feelings inside you there :-)

I am wondering why you think that limerance is more accurate in describing your relationship with your T?

Limerance refers to a more crush-like state. Infatuation. It is missing a lot of the deeper meanings that go along with transference.

Being in the field, limerance in a word that I can say we have never used in school or in training. Only transference. I'm curious to your thoughts on why you feel this is a more accurate description?

it sounds like idealization (there is an idealized transference) with obsession or some obessessional traits, dependency traits, maybe other personality traits.

Twinks, I'm glad you found a term that gives you more insight into your relationship with your T. I think each person needs to find meaning in their relationship however they can. If this shoe fits, then wear it! I don't really feel my relationship with my T is much about transference, so I don't get too much insight from reading about that phenomenon. After reading about limerance, I can't say this fits for me either. I take some meaning about the relationship here and there from various readings and what others share with me, but a lot too from what I know to be true between us.

Sounds like the definition of "falling in love!"



Yeah, but I still think transference covers it all!

I am still very intrigued by transference, limerence what ever people call it. Especially since Mz Jellofluff enlightened me to the notion that transference can be about transferring feelings in general,not just feelings you have or had for another specific person, to your therapist. And not just errrotic feeling of love and lust. (Pink, I really missed your perspectives during that discussion)

In the passage you shared the only thing on the list that may be happening in my therapeutic relationship is the "Fear of rejection and sometimes incapacitating but always unsettling shyness in LO's presence, especially in the beginning and whenever uncertainty strikes. I certainly experience this symptom but I not sure what's the underlying cause. Fear of rejection, judgment, insanity, embarrassment, etc. Although I am trying to remain as open minded as possible, I don't think it is because i am "In love" with her. Based on the abstract you shared, I not experiencing Limerence in my therapeutic relationship, transference probably in some ways. (See ya all, I have evolved a little bit)

Good article on transference and projection (putting your own feelings onto another versus putting past feelings about a particular person onto another):

http://www.crisiscounseling.com/Arti...ansference.htm

</font><blockquote><div id="quote"><font class="small">Quote:</font>
'Limerence' makes the heart grow far too fonder

By Sharon Jayson, USA TODAY
Are you crazy in love or just plain crazy?
It all depends on whether new research into a condition called "limerence" leads to the creation of a new psychiatric diagnosis.

"It's that first stage of attraction where there's that bliss and euphoria and the newness of love," says Brenda Schaeffer, a psychologist from Minneapolis.

That's the upside.

But there is a dark side, too.

"It is obsessive-compulsive when you're feeling it. It's the center of your life," says Arthur Aron, a psychology professor at State University of New York-Stony Brook.

"Is it a mental illness? People are crazy when they're in love. It's extremely common to be intensely in love, but it's temporary."

Two psychology researchers will be in Las Vegas today to present new work on limerence to the American Association of Behavioral and Social Sciences.

One is Albert Wakin, an assistant psychology professor at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Conn. He was a colleague of the late psychologist Dorothy Tennov, who used the term in her 1979 book, Love and Limerence: The Experience of Being in Love. Wakin knew Tennov at the University of Bridgeport but didn't assist in her research.

Over the past year, however, he and graduate student Duyen Vo of Southern Connecticut State University in New Haven have begun screening for limerence, which they liken to obsessive-compulsive disorders and addiction behavior.

"It's difficult to tell in the first few months of a relationship whether they're developing a healthy love relationship or an unhealthy limerent relationship," Wakin says. "In a love relationship, the feelings give way to a more predictable relationship and it feels good. In a limerent relationship, those longings tend to intensify. Over time, it doesn't feel good."

................

" Limerence subsides if the love is returned, but the researchers say for unrequited love, their advice is to cut off contact and hope that time will lessen its disruptive effects.

They say it's premature to ask that limerence be classified in the American Psychiatric Association's handbook of mental disorders because much more research is needed. The next publication is in 2012.

But, Wakin says, "if our research continues to go in the direction it has been going and that we expect it will go, ultimately what we want to move toward is diagnosis, prognosis and treatment."




Copyright 2008 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co.

Find this article at:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/...imerence_N.htm

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I just read this and like you I thought of therapist relationships too. I'm not sure I would agree with it as a mental illness tho! And I don't see any reason transference could not be occuring at the same time. It does seem that limerence could stop a transference from being successfully worked thru. I have known women who agonized for years with intense 'romantic transferences' that seemingly never were overcome even tho intellectually understanding what was going on.


PS to mods-if long quotes are not allowed here I apologize and hope you can take it out and just leave the link.

edited to shorten quote

okay maybe if I post this I can get it out of my head.

every time I read the thread title, my mind reads limmerick and then it starts....

"There once was a T from Nantucket..... "

sorry!!

Thanks for that article DodgyOldBird.

</font><blockquote><div id="quote"><font class="small">Quote:</font>
"It's difficult to tell in the first few months of a relationship whether they're developing a healthy love relationship or an unhealthy limerent relationship," Wakin says. "In a love relationship, the feelings give way to a more predictable relationship and it feels good. In a limerent relationship, those longings tend to intensify. Over time, it doesn't feel good."

</div></font></blockquote><font class="post">This did ring a bell with me about my relationship with T. In the first few months of seeing him, I was in a kind of "crush" phase. I thought about him constantly, found pics of him on the Internet, discovered his home address, listened to a voicemail he left me about a thousand times, etc. It seemed highly unnatural and scary to me (I had never heard of transference). But after a few months, just as this limerance article says, the relationship subsided into a more healthy, less obsessed one, of mutual caring. I gradually slid into being comfortable with the therapeutic relationship, was more secure in my feelings for T and recognized the authenticity of what he reciprocated. He says our relationship is real, that he cares, etc. etc. I am secure in where I stand. The obsessive phase is over. I always just likened this to the crush phase of a new relationship. It would indeed be torture to never leave this phase.

</font><blockquote><div id="quote"><font class="small">Quote:</font>
"if our research continues to go in the direction it has been going and that we expect it will go, ultimately what we want to move toward is diagnosis, prognosis and treatment."

</div></font></blockquote><font class="post">I sure hope they don't start classifying unrequited love as a mental disorder. And people can get treatment for it already--I'm sure that is a problem many people work on in therapy.

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ECHOES said:
okay maybe if I post this I can get it out of my head.

every time I read the thread title, my mind reads limmerick and then it starts....

"There once was a T from Nantucket..... "

sorry!!

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There once was a T from nantucket
Who said face this problem don't duck it
Get off of my couch
And though you say ouch
Tote my bills home with you in this bucket!

Dodgy, that's great!!