Transference

Recently someone said about me that I am a black and white thinker. It was my sister’s friend’s dad, who I met over a nice Easter dinner. I think his assessment is not true, but I know what he’s getting at… it has to do with how I state things – as if I know. Maybe if I were a man my statements would be more acceptable. Women are supposed to say, “I feel like…” or “Maybe, perhaps such and such might be an idea to consider…” But I think it’s better to make your statement and be prepared for disagreement and also willing to alter your belief, but to make it all the same. That is how men communicate, for the most part. Some people like the way I state things, some people do not. Michelle is ambivalent. I think it reminds her of her father, one handsome, charismatic economics professor who always knows, and who makes grand, bold statements of belief throughout dinner conversation. I like him a lot. I like her mom too, and I like having dinner with her family. There is (in my opinion) the external reality of extreme manners and intellect while underneath I sense aggression.

The main concepts discussed in class last night were as follows (as related to Freud): infantile dependency, repression, and transference. Infantile dependency is a universal human experience due to the extended period of care required by babies. It is such a painful experience (for all, more or less) than we repress these memories. We push them out of our consciousness, but they exist in our pre-conscious, a storehouse of ideas, thoughts, feelings, and all the memories we have.

The price of repression is transference, wherein we recreate wherever possible the pain of dependency. This concept is usually discussed in a clinical context, which is interesting because I really do not think I experience transference with my therapist, which is a good and a bad thing. But after our class discussion I saw my transference everywhere, in all the intimate relationships I’ve ever had, in my relationships with professors and employers, with friends, everywhere! We actively seek out transference. Nobody can make another person feel anything, they can only trigger an emotion, which is increasingly likely the less conscious any given person is of this dynamic. We convince ourselves our feelings are related to the present rather than the past. We have more choices than we realize! Why do we seek to recreate the pain of dependency? Two reasons – the (unconscious) fantasy of fixing the past in the present (other psychologists would not call this a fantasy but assert the possibility of emotionally corrective experiences) and masochism, the belief that we suffered while dependent on our parents because we did something wrong, and if we suffer enough in the present, we might eventually deserve something better. Finally, and this last concept resonates so strongly with me that I am totally won over to Freud – his theory of psychopathology, that symptoms are the result of the repression of sexual and aggressive feelings, conflicts, and ambivalence that we perceive as intolerable. Repressed sexuality and aggression express themselves in ways other than pathological symptoms: dreams, jokes and sarcasm, slips, mistakes and accidents.

Michelle was awake when I got home, so I was talking to her about all this, especially as my eyes are being opened to my own passive aggression – although actually in our relationship I’ve been “able” to express straight up aggressive aggression, for whatever reason. Interestingly, Michelle says she is not an angry person and does not perceive herself as passive aggressive in the examples I came up with when asked for examples. Certainly, I have to respect the way that she experiences and perceives herself in this context. To disregard her beliefs would be very unloving and invalidating, but we may have to agree to disagree. I am realizing so many ways that we have recreated our parental/dependency relationships with each other, and I don’t think it’s a bad thing but rather is inevitable and that the drive to do this largely constitutes attraction and intimacy. The key is to be aware. If you keep “ending up” with the same type of person and feel victimized by life or God, be aware that you chose those people. In my case, I’m accepting the choices I’ve made and am looking for emotionally corrective experiences, haha. I am attracted to people with problems. I even think that I chose to live with my old roommate because of her anger and rage, which my mother expressed intermittently and especially when depressed. And let's be honest, I not only am attracted to people with these traits but I have them too, although they exist in a more subtle, manageable way than when I was younger and less aware of what might be going on besides my own misery.