Significant others

Zbig makes a good comment in the previous post about what would my wife (or my significant others, as they say in the psychotherapy business) think and feel if they read the post about my client who seems to be developing a strong transference to me that may be romanticised.

This is a good comment because it articulates a very real problem for those in the psychotherapy profession. Over the years I have seen this issue raise itself with a whole variety of therapists many times and it is indeed a difficult circumstance for them and their significant others to deal with.



Sometimes clients develop strong feelings towards their therapists, sometimes positive, sometimes negative, sometimes sexualised and sometimes not. How is the spouse of the therapist meant to deal with this? A difficult question indeed and a very real one.

Is it reasonable for the spouse to feel jealous, threatened, excluded and so forth?
If they feel those things is it reasonable for the spouse to express their concerns to the therapist who is just doing his or her job.?
If they are express how is the therapist meant to respond to the spouse?

As you can see a veritable minefield of potential relationship ruptures (as they are fashionably referred to these days in the psychotherapy business).

However I need to place this in context. The psychology behind the positive transference is by no means exclusive to the counselling relationship. It happens in all areas of life and human relationships.



For instance in the work place. Take something a tad monotonous like the banking industry. There maybe a man who is respected in the banking industry, seen as talented in his field and has some power in the industry. As he goes about his business he will come across various women who know of his reputation. As they get to know each other positive transference feelings will develop in some instances and sometimes they will be strong transference feelings from the less powerful woman to the more powerful man.

This is no different to the psychology of the transference in the therapy setting. Obviously it is not appropriate for the client and therapist to have a relationship but for two people who work in the same industry like banking they can easily have a relationship and many indeed do. But as I said before the psychology behind the relationship is no different than the client therapist relationship. However the point at hand is positive transference feelings from one person to another are not exclusive to the therapy relationship.



However in therapy the feelings can get quite strong in quite a short space of time. Indeed the therapist and therapy setting are a perfect green house for such feelings to grow. Thus the questions cited above have special relevance to therapists and their significant others.

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It happens sometimes

I have seen a twenty something woman about 4 times. About the end of the second session I could see it in the way she looked at me. A strong positive transference is developing, maybe even very strong. She reports the sessions have been most fruitful for her and is keen to attend further sessions.

But it is the way she looks at me right into my face and eyes. I find it a little bit disconcerting as she can kind of stare at me for a little time. Not an excessively long period of time but it is a little longer than would usually be the case.



Why do I feel a little perturbed by it? At the moment I am “The best thing since sliced bread”, in her mind so I am supposed to feel good about that aren’t I?. But it is the swiftness of the emotional development, it could have a romantic quality to it and they could be quite intense emotions.

I have dealt with such clients in the past but I suppose I am yet to find out how such intense emotions are going to be displayed by her. If she is an acting out type of person then it is going to be some hard work at times. Some clear boundary setting is going to be required along with some clear confrontations. I suppose I am not looking forward to the possibility of that. However from how she has behaved so far, acting out is not one of her traits.



As I have mentioned before an intense positive transference sooner or later turns around to an intense negative transference. As I write I feel I am perhaps hyper vigilant with her at this time due to the strength of the emotions she is feeling towards me.

Maybe also it is the fact that she really looks into my face and eyes. Maybe I am finding that a kind of ‘closeness’ which I am not currently comfortable with. I get a sense of too much too soon sort of thing.


In dealing with her I kind of feel like this at times

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Erotic transference

It was a good episode of the Sopranos last night. Not only did a few people get whacked but a good deal of the show was dedicated to Tony Soprano’s relationship with his therapist. He finally came clean and told her directly in his mobster type way that he was in love with her, deeply!

Now for a female therapist that would be a hazardous thing to have happen! He had developed a fully fledged erotic transference with her. He tried his usual intimidation tactics with her to again gain control as he was the needy one in this instance, but she stood her ground. He suddenly started having erotic dreams about her and suddenly started to have some erection problems with his mistress and wife. The episode really did capture the psychology of it quite well even if it was overly dramatised a bit. I wonder if the movie makers have ‘experts’ on such matters giving advice on the psychology of it all, as technically it was quite sound.

The whole concept of erotic transference is an interesting area of study. In such transference the client falls in love with the therapist and that love gets sexualised to varying degrees. Some a lot and others very little. However I have found it to be a bit more complex than that.

Lots of things can happen to the love and sexualization of the therapist. For instance I have had clients desexualize me. I recall one woman recite a long monologue one day on how bad men were. At the end of it I stated that I was a man and not like what she reported to which she replied, “Oh you’re not a man, you’re a Tony”.

She had desexualized me to be genderless and thus she could form a attachment to me because her misandry would have otherwise not allowed that to happen.

Then there is the relationship between love and sex in the client’s mind. People usually over correlate the two and if the client mentions love then that of course it is assumed means sex as well. If they state that it does not then of course they are in denial according to many. I don’t particularly agree with that.

Without a doubt some clients do develop strong feelings of love and sexualised feelings to the therapist as well. As was shown in the Sopranos that can involve sexual dreams and fantasies about the therapist that are quite vivid.

However there maybe another type of love for instance between siblings or parents and children. This is where there can be strong feelings of love and attraction that by and large does not get sexualised. There would be some, maybe many who would definitely disagree with this view. They would say that deep down in the id or very small Child ego state there are sexual feelings. That it is normal for teenage siblings to have sexual feelings at times to each other and people who say they don’t do so because their moral system does not allow them to recognise such sexualised feelings. They are simply repressed into the unconscious.

These women dislike each other but do they

allow themselves to be aware of such things

The problem with this is it’s a circular argument. As soon as one disputes such a position one can then be told they are simply in denial as well.

However love feelings and sexual feelings are two different and discrete emotions like other feelings such as anger and sadness or scare and embarrassment. I think there are few who would dispute this.

Thus it seems not unreasonable that love and sexual feelings can behave like any other feelings. Sometimes feelings are closely linked and sometimes they are not. For some sexual feelings and feelings of love are closely linked and for others they are not.

Thus one needs to be careful with the term erotic transference as erotic specifically relates to sexual or salacious matters. It seems that it is possible to have a strong sense of love and attraction for a therapist without it necessarily being highly sexualised thus the term erotic would be a misnomer in such cases.

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