Posted by Dinah on June 19, 2005, at 21:15:19
In reply to Re: Chapter 4 - Boundaries, posted by Dinah on June 16, 2005, at 17:51:12
That was my favorite message from this chapter. That transference is not a therapy limited phenomenon. By discussing how the same thing is at work in other relationships in our lives, it takes the idea out of that nasty place that therapists seem to place it when they dismiss our feelings as transference. (Especially if they just so happen to be uncomfortable or defensive at the moment.)
Yeah, maybe so, and so what?
Many of our feelings toward many people in our lives contain elements of transference. That doesn't make them any less real.
I don't think it's possible to deny that transference exists. I remember her story at the beginning of the chapter about the three women going to see the same female therapist, and the different person each described. It made me smile.
You only need to look at the Admin board to see how different people see Dr. Bob. He gives us such limited information about himself, and different people build different visions of who he is based on that limited information, and doubtless also based on past experiences with people in authority, or people with similar styles, or who knows what other of the limited characteristics he objectively displays. The same thing happened with my favorite professor in college. He was as good as a Rorschach test. People described him completely differently, probably based more on them than him.
I know that there are one or two personal characteristics that can turn me off a person entirely because I base my opinion about their entire personality on that. Totally unfair of me.
The one thing she mentioned briefly, and maybe she gets back to later, is the role of the therapeutic situation in developing transference.
My personal opinion is that human brains are programmed to respond in certain ways to certain types of relationships. And therapy mimics other relationships. Since we haven't had therapy for millenia, or long enough to develop ingrained responses to the therapeutic situation, our brains respond as they might to similar situations.
So IMHO, a major cause for erotic transferences is the similarity of therapy to love relationships. There is increasing intimate disclosure (however one sided), acceptance, the listening and attentive posture most closely associated with a lover. I think it's sort of normal for erotic feelings to crop up in those circumstances because our brains are programmed to respond that way.
It can also mimic a parental relationship in some ways. Especially in the lack of reciprocity. And we can respond in the ways that are programmed in us to respond as children to parents.
Maybe our life circumstances can influence which of the ways we respond. My erotic potential is very stunted, so I would respond as a child to a parent.
I'm not sure if I buy into the analytic transference models. It's possible I guess.
poster:Dinah
thread:491935
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20050615/msgs/515697.html