Posted by Tamar on April 28, 2005, at 15:32:42
In reply to Wanting to apologize to my ex T, posted by pinkeye on April 28, 2005, at 13:30:45
Just a question: can you be sure your T didn’t understand about transference? I would be very surprised, despite the culture differences. Perhaps I’m wrong in making this assumption, but psychology depends very heavily on Freud, especially historically. And transference was one of Freud’s key ideas. People don’t necessarily agree with every word that Freud wrote, but I would assume that Ts all over the world would have encountered the idea of transference during their training. But maybe I’m wrong in making that assumption. Though I suppose that even if your T knew all about transference in Freudian theory, he was practising in a sociocultural context that’s very different from the US, and maybe the theory is interpreted and critiqued differently in different contexts.
> I need to be very careful .. it tries to manipulate me into all different ways of thinking.
Oh yes - I do the same thing myself. That’s how I recognise it! ShortE caught me at it the last time I felt that way. I think most of us have experienced it from time to time.
> It is not that I am trying to be even good..
I sometimes wonder if we have problems precisely *because* we want to be good. If we didn’t care about being good, we wouldn’t worry about failing, and we wouldn’t have the emotional depth to experience profound mental suffering. The world needs more people like us!
> That I behave like a kid, and behave like an overgrown adult - at the very same time.. And it is confusing to me.
About being responsible: I wonder if that’s a job your mother should have done when you were growing up, but you ended up having to do it because your father delegated your mother’s responsibilities to you (presumably without your mother’s permission). So instead of your mother taking responsibility for adult relationships with men, you had to do it, when you were too young to be ready for it. It’s hardly surprising that you try to live up to the expectation of responsibility and simultaneously try to evade it. Just a hunch; I could be wrong. But letting go of that demand for responsibility /control is hard to do! I’m still working on it :)
> And my dad was the same.. He was also a very good person at heart.
It’s great that you recognise your dad’s goodness, even though you acknowledge the pain of some of his parenting mistakes.
You’re doing some hard work: hang in there!
Tamar
poster:Tamar
thread:490915
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20050428/msgs/491016.html