I think
about my therapist all the time and desperately wish for a closer relationship
with her. I want to be her friend too. Will this desire for a personal friendship
ever go away? I feel so desperate about it sometimes.
The desire for a personal relationship with your
psychotherapist is called a transference reaction to the psychotherapy.
Now, many persons believe that
transference
is some sort of an unrealistic misperception of the psychotherapist by the
client. But the great French psychoanalyst
Jacques Lacan taught, and I agree with
him, that “transference” is nothing more nor less than real life
occurring in the therapeutic situation.
For example,
if you have been mistreated in the past so that you’re extremely sensitive
to fears of abandonment, then in all of your relationships you
will encounter events that trigger those fears. And the psychotherapeutic
relationship is no exception. Of course, the events that happen in psychotherapy
aren’t really attempts by the psychotherapist to abandon you (that is,
if the psychotherapist is a competent psychotherapist), but they will still
have realistic elements that could be felt as abandonment, such as
when the psychotherapist has to reschedule an appointment. The fact that
such an inadvertent occurrence triggers such fears then becomes a meaningful
event for you to explore in the psychotherapy for connections to your
past.
There’s
also another side to this transference concept as well:
positive feelings. In some cases, such
feelings derive from “common”
love;
that is, you desire to fill your inner emptiness with romantic illusions
about another person. But in other cases, a different dynamic can be at work.
If you have somehow had your self-image altered by some traumatic event of
the past, such as childhood sexual molestation, then you will tend to think
of yourself as unworthy of any feelings of purity. Nevertheless, when you
encounter a person who does not mistreat you, you will feel genuine fondness.
And it makes no difference if this person is a friend or a psychotherapist.
It’s all real life. These feelings might be unsettling to you, because
they contradict your perception of yourself as a “bad” person,
but they are nonetheless an aspect of your true goodness.
In either case,
though, your task in psychotherapy is not to become an actual friend of
your psychotherapist but simply to understand your inner capacity to
relate to another person out of a mutual concern for each other’s
good.
It’s only
by talking openly and honestly, within the psychotherapy itself, about your
feelings for your psychotherapist that you can come to achieve this
understanding.
In fact, genuine
psychotherapy demands that, in order to avoid the trap of the
love-hate flip-flop, a “third
person”—the unconscious—must always
be present in the consulting room between the client and the psychotherapist.
Through their mutual willingness to look at all events within the
psychotherapy—and discuss them openly—as manifestations of the
unconscious, both the client and the psychotherapist can focus on healing
rather than get caught up in all the perversions of “love” and
hate.
If you learn
this lesson properly, then you can go out and begin to make some real
friends.
But if you cling
to the wish to be a friend with your psychotherapist, you are clinging to
nothing more than an illusion behind which you hide your fear of abandonment
and loneliness—the very fears that prevent
you from being a friend with anyone. And if that’s the case, then you
haven’t done genuine psychotherapy.
No
advertising—no sponsor—just the simple truth . . .
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