DGB Psychology: More On Transference

Transference is like the dialectic itself -- in fact, it is the re-creation or reincarnation of an old, emotional dialectic. It can be good and/or bad depending on which way it turns. It can be used creatively and/or destructively.  In the sphere of love and sex, it is very obsessive-compulsive, very addictive -- the essence of the psychology and biochemistry all rolled into one -- and thus, very hard to avoid.

Some transferences are much more dangerous than others -- transferences connected to alcoholic, drug-using, and/or abusive fathers and/or moms, transferences connected to abandoning fathers and/or mothers, transferences connected to violent fathers and/or mothers, transferences connected to distancing fathers or mothers, transferences connected to over-controlling fathers or moms, transferences connected to sado-masochist fathers or moms...

<em><strong>When transference is involved in self-growth, it involves a 'healing' and 'patching' of the self-esteem -- it involves an evolutionary progression from environmental support to self-support  (in Gestalt terminology). It involves a 'creative dialectic negotiation and integration' in the personality that is usually highly connected to the creative dialectic negotiation and integration that is happening in the transference relationship at the same time.

This adult transference relationship is both similar and/or different than the old transference relationship(s). It is like the Myth of The Phoenix where out of the old, we rise and fly into the new...and are reborn in the process...From a 'caterpillar', we become a 'butterfly'. </strong></em>

When transference is self-destructive and pathological, it involves not only a re-creation of the past, but also a repetition of the past. It involves a regression into 'earlier states of being' that are not self-supportive. Rather than healing and/or patching the 'gap' or 'void' in self-esteem, instead through a recurrence or repetition of adult events similar to childhood events, that gap or void is reinforced and widened until once again it becomes a 'chasm' or an 'abyss' or an 'absess' in the the self-esteem and personality.

Transference repeated in this most  negative sense involves the re-creation of a 'huge gaping pit in the stomach' or wherever one chooses to 'lock up' one's 'transferred dialectic rage, anxiety, and/or grief'.

-- dgbn, Feb. 1st, 2009.
-- david gordon bain