Posted by pseudoname on April 7, 2006, at 12:32:59
In reply to Re: real feelings » pseudoname, posted by special_k on April 7, 2006, at 9:38:50
> > what if these feelings have important triggers and effects just like the feelings you would call “real”?
>
> triggers and effects?
> i'm not quite sure what you mean...I should point out that I'm not thinking of transference as just love-for-the-therapist. In psychoanalysis, transference feelings can be love or anger or whatever.
If you present to a therapist who does NOT subscribe to transference theory, say, some very troublesome emotional reactions about her, she and you can look freely through a wide range of possibilities for *any* features of the situation that may be involved in triggering your responses. And the two of you would be free to consider a wide range of possible short- and long-term effects that your responses have that may be maintaining them despite their troublesome side.
A therapist disposed to expect “transference” and to think in those terms will not be free to consider such a wide range of possible causes or hidden benefits. “I remind you of your mother, hmm?” Well, maybe in part — but also maybe not despite some superficial similarities. The ways that events influence our emotional responses are enormously complex and very often simply untraceable with any degree of scientific confidence. The assumption that transference is going on cuts off inquiry as soon as enough superficial similarities to prominent childhood figures are found.
> > What if […] those important NON-childhood connections are never discovered?
>
> what kinds of important NON-childhood connections might be passed over?Any fears, hopes, attitudes, habits, assumptions, incorrect information, tastes, conditioning, etc, that were not apparently acquired in childhood and have no obvious corollaries to childhood events or relationships have to be excluded because they don't fit the theory.
If I was really angry with my analyst, his operating principle dictated that I was responding with anger because the current situation somehow reminded me of my childhood relationship with my father. Or mother. Or brother. (Whatever intuitively thrilled him the most at the time.)
But what if I was angry with my analyst because of things I'd more recently learned about scientific validation and the ethical obligations of service providers? What if recent changes in my political thinking led me to demand greater accountability from people like him? What if his attitude was contrary to the spirit of honest inquiry I was getting steeped in by my friends at school?
He would only consider those questions if they could somehow be framed to be congruent to troubles I had (or at least reported myself to have had) in my childhood with specific important figures.
> but i guess it is in the effort to explain / understand why you feel as you do.
I think you have nailed the attractiveness of the theory of transference. As I said yesterday, the fact that feelings come out of nowhere without any control or identifiable reason is itself scary.
But when we rely on a comforting fictitious explanation to the extent that it cuts off inquiries and interventions that really could improve our lives, it has to go.
poster:pseudoname
thread:628935
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20060406/msgs/630107.html