Transference/Countertransference

[finding my way]

I understood transference to be the supreme opportunity for healing if a therapist is skilled in handling it. To be honest, with my many therapy experiences, I always ended up feeling I had to protect my therapist from my transference because it felt like they couldn't handle it. (mine were more about anger and disappointment and abandonment)

Allan, could you give us a picture of what it would be like to properly handle transference with a client?

[Chisholm]

Perhaps I am misunderstanding everything, is Allan saying he should cut off contact because of my transference?

[Chisholm]

And if it is about his countertransference, my question is are therapists allowed to disclose their "amorous" feelings?

[IrmaJean]

Perhaps I am misunderstanding everything, is Allan saying he should cut off contact because of my transference?

I can't speak for Allan, but I would say absolutely not because of your transference. Cutting off contact in this case, in my opinion, would be due to the fact that your therapist has allowed his feelings to interfere with your therapy and he has compromised the safety of your professional relationship with him, thus potentially putting you in harm's way.

Transference in therapy can offer the supreme chance at healing as Finding has indicated. In fact, this is exactly what happened with me. It presented me with the chance to explore what is meaningful to me within relationships. I came to know how I want to love others by looking at my feelings for my therapist. I was able to tie my behaviors to my past and understand where this came from and why I behave this way. I took out of this experience the most meaningful lesson of my therapy...that I would choose to love someone despite having the prior knowledge that I would lose that person. And knowing that was what I needed to heal. Very powerful. Very healing. Life changing for me... All of this was possible for me because my therapist kept the space safe.

Your therapy is about you, Chisholm. Your transference is about you. This is what you would be exploring. What your feelings say about you, what story they tell, what information they give about you...

Therapists are bound by a code of ethics. They must maintain the boundaries of the relationship at all times. Of course they are human and have feelings too, but it is up to them to handle this so it does not become a part of your therapy. There is a therapeutic space which the therapist holds that leaves a client free to express and explore feelings safely. Your therapist seems to have compromised the safety of this space by crossing some lines. You have done nothing wrong in this, Chisholm. It's in his behaviors and what he has been expressing to you. It seems inappropriate in my view.

His emails have all been very chatty and I guess in some cases flirtatious?

He should only be contacting you briefly and in a professional manner that has directly to do with your therapy.

He went very red and asked me whether I had lost or changed any feelings towards him. I replied that I did not think so. He then told me that he had not lost or changed any feelings towards me

This is inappropriate conversation. How does this discussion serve you and your therapy?

But the emails and texts have become more and more frequent

This should not be happening.

he quite freely speaks about "having feelings"

Again, this is inappropriate discussion and doesn't serve any positive function in your therapy.

I understand that you're confused and that this must be upsetting for you, Chisholm. I'm not a professional and am speaking from my gut here, but his behavior does concern me.

[Guest SomethingOrOther]

Hello Chisholm,

I wondered how things are going now. Have you decided something how you want to try to resolve this situation? I don't know the exact rules, or what therapists are allowed to say. Do you still feel so torn about this?

S.

[Chisholm]

Hi there.

Guess I have been at loss for words of late as I really, really don't want to leave my therapist and staying with him means trusting him not to "act out". When he talks of being authentic about his feelings but not declarative - the way that I see it is that he is loathe to eneter into the terrain of professional misconduct but he believes that his feelings could be affirming and a corrective emotional experience for me. I think this is what he means by his feelings "balancing out" my own - he has given me the out in that he has said that if his feelings cause me more anxiety/distress, we could talk about a referral in which case I would be able to discuss "what happened between him and I openly" as he would fill the new therapist in. He has specifically asked me to trust him "not to act out his feelings" therefore I don't think he has any intentions of entering into any physical contact. he has been authentic about his feelings as the intimacy between us is almost tangible at times and he often becomes so emotional he practically chokes up.

In the last session he asked me the following, he said: "assuming that I often thought about him, I might want to ask whether he thinks about me" - needless to say I was too nervous to ask but I think I got the picture. I guess it made me feel quite special. Yes the anxiety is there because I think this is dicey territory but is it truly dangerous?

[IrmaJean]

Chisholm, it is indeed dangerous for you emotionally. He is already acting out. Your therapist is acting unethically and unprofessionally. This is not therapy. I understand that you are attached to your therapist and leaving will be difficult, but if you stay in therapy with him you may end up seriously hurt. For your own safety and emotional health, I strongly recommend leaving this therapist. There can be no rationalizing of his behavior, Chisholm. His behavior is inappropriate and wrong in a therapeutic relationship. I say this with compassion and concern for you. You have done nothing wrong. This is all his doing. This relationship is not healthy for you. Please consider seeing another therapist.

[Guest SomethingOrOther]

I understand that his hope is apparently that his feelings help build your self-esteem, though it seems he is also aware of walking on thin ice regarding the boundaries. So he asks about your distress, to make his ice look more stable, though it is clearly not clever to connect that question to the „threat“ of refering you. You actually should be able to discuss your feelings without fearing consequences, isn’t that the whole point? I think, instead you’re rather wondering, whether you can express your distress without feeling responsible for breaking the relationship and suffering the consequences. If that is how it is now and you take a good step back to look at it, do you think that is how therapy works?

It’s still his responsibility, don’t let him slip out of that.

To me, the situation is dangerous, because once he says he isn’t impartial, that doesn’t simply mean he can say or imply nice things and make you feel good, it also means he might be blinded to your needs by his own and he should do some real good thinking, preferably with a supervisor, to figure out whether he can still actually tell one from the other.

But that’s his responsibility again.

Your right is to express how you feel about this, to ask how he intends to keep up boundaries without objectivity, and set your own rules for trusting him on that. The way he implies having feelings for you all the time, and fishing for affirmation, is not a good basis to trust him on that in my opinion. I can really understand that it is nice to feel so special, and that it would be hard to give it up, but the reason you are anxious, is not that you have a trust problem and otherwise all would be fine. You are anxious, because there is a clear threat that he might not act in your best interest anymore, and it looks like he isn’t taking that serious.

So, assuming that you see him again, I’d say there’s no way around putting the cards on the table, because it DOES cause you distress, it doesn’t feel safe and therefore it needs to change. Maybe you can also ask your friend for help and advice on how you can best deal with this, do you think she could help you there?

S.

[finding my way]

IrmaJean & SomethingOrOther are making some really good points. I am also reflecting back on something IrmaJean said earlier, on how her transference led her to discover what she wanted out of a relationship and how important that was. Chisholm, things aren't going ideally, but I wonder if you can still get something out of this experience...? Are you getting an instinct for you in all this, the kind of dynamics that are good for you to reach for? the kind you need to protect yourself from?

[Chisholm]

I have quoted you verbatim the things he has said, I have practically a lever- arch file of to-and-fro emails between us and I have felt the intimacy but perhaps I am just projecting his feelings. Perhaps I am just seeing what I want to see. Perhaps in this day and age, emails are acceptable and he is just trying to give me an additional avenue to verbalise. Perhaps he is just being kind.

I dont know what to believe anymore.....

[IrmaJean]

Chisholm, I know this must be very upsetting and confusing, but I am concerned about you. You can't project the things he's said to you. You can't project his inappropriate behavior. That is all his doing. I'm not trying to vilify him, but I don't see this as a healthy or healing therapeutic environment for you. We are here to be of support to you. I'm sorry you are going through this.

[Guest SomethingOrOther]

It is a difficult situation to be in. Did you have a chance to discuss it again in a session or an email exchange?

I still believe it is important how this makes you feel. And it shows that you are anxious, irritated and uncertain about his motives and his meanings. Since he asked you about your distress, do you think you could talk about this?

I hope you believe that your feelings are valid and important, because in this relationship it's not all about what he intends or thinks is best. I hope you find your way out of this confusion soon.

S.

[Catmom]

I don't know how to tear myself away from this because I have feelings for him.

I sure hope you have the strength to GET OUT NOW. I was hung up on my therapist & managed to get out but I have read of many many clients, usually, but not always, women, who get frozen like a fly in amber for YEARS with these sick bozos who call themselves therapists.

Listen to your head and not your heart on this one or you will suffer even more emotional pain.

Catmom

P.S. Unlike Irmajean, I am trying to vilify your "therapist." I makes me so mad that vulnerable people like therapy clients get ensnared this way. Two years ago I posted here about my transference agony and that is over now. I am lonelier now but much saner.

P.P.S. My transference thread is here: http://community.mentalhelp.net/showthread.php?t=139

[Symora]

I'm with Catmom... your therapist is toying with you, being unclear and enigmatic, playing sexual games with you, and he's getting off on it. Meanwhile you are agonizing about this and more tortured now than when you first started therapy I'm certain. The strong attraction and mystery of it all is keeping you there like a magnet, but the best thing you can do is get out because he can keep you hanging with his subtle overtures for a very long time.... If what you are looking for is an affair, then he may be the right guy, but if you are looking for true therapy and healing, then I don't think he is much of a choice...

He is just always so unclear and taunting in his communications, that is the clincher for me that he is playing games ... The other one is how much he communicates with you between meetings, by e-mail. I have never heard of a professional who does that, unless there is seduction at play, thus the lack of ethics. He knows he is riding the line, but it sounds like the sexual undertones are hard to resist... that is why he should be backing away if you cannot. The clues are all there, but when we are caught up in these situations it is just so easy to disregard them because it is very exciting and validating, it feels like a high.... So even if our alarm bells are ringing, we choose to ignore it because of that excitement. But it takes us nowhere, never really makes us happy, and there is lots of time lost in the confusing situation... attraction is a difficult thing to move away from. It is so easy to be ruled by the heart instead of the brain, which in fact is the faculty that should rule is such situations ...

[Catmom]

Hi Chisolm-

I have been thinking about your situation and one suggestion I do have for you is to get a book that I am about to recommend if at all possible.

It is called In Session: The Bond Between Women and their Therapists by Deborah A. Lott. I know of no other book on this subject that gives helpful information for a woman in this very disturbing situation. I have read many articles and papers about "transference" but these were for a professional audience and in no way addressed the very deep pain that these relationships cause for the client. This book does just that.

I was lucky in that my therapist never acted as inappropriately as yours has, but I do recall this book has a chapter on what to do if your therapist crosses ethical boundaries. This one section is worth the price of the book, in my opinion. Plus the stories helped me know that I wasn't the only person having such strong feelings for a therapist.

Good luck with all this, Chisolm, and please keep us updated on how it is going.

Catmom

[Chisholm]

I certainly hear all the warnings but there is still so much I am not clear on. I confronted him in our session today, as much as I was able. I accused him of taking advantage of my vulnerability and my inability to verbalise. He has insisted that he stretched the boundaries ito the emails and sms's because of my inability to verbalise. Although he did admit to getting "spontaneous enjoyment out of them". I was reading some of Lala's old posts and I see she had email contact with her therapist? Technology has advance so rapidly - would this be a boundary transgression or not?

I intimated that I did not want to be seen simply "physically" and he then pointed out my passive aggression in analogy to my friend Dean (whenever I was angry with her I would not answer or return her phone calls and whenever there are issues that I struggle to verbalise in therapy, we will often fall into what we called the “Dean analogy” – a technique that we both openly acknowledge). Continuing with the “Dean relationship analogy” he suddenly said, “despite the inconsistencies, deep down you know that you are loved and respected” – a comment that was out of context with the discussion we were having about Dean – I believe/d that he was reassuring me of his authentic feelings.

He then reminded me of something I had said in reference to a children's party that I had held (the kid's were running around in the dark with sparklers and I told him how sad and empty I had felt at that moment and so badly wanted to feel loved) and asked me what it was that I had wanted in that moment - he suggested that I might be able to "internalise" some of this in therapy with him. Again he asked me to "trust him not to act out his feelings".

Maybe I just have to trust him?

[Chisholm]

This is an example of an email exchange that we had some time ago:

**********************************************************

[IrmaJean]

Chisholm, he might not have malicious intentions...it's hard to say...maybe it is a lack of training on his part? It doesn't really matter what the case is...the point is that this is your therapy and it is supposed to be about you. His feelings have entered into the equation and this isn't supposed to happen. This puts you at risk of being emotionally harmed.

I also have had great difficulty verbalizing in the past...and most especially at first in the therapy setting. What my therapist did to help with this was to allow me to write him notes between sessions. I was not allowed to email these notes. I later brought them to my session where he would read them and we would discuss them. We would exchange a very occasional email, but this was often about scheduling changes. He would encourage me to bring my thoughts and feelings to the session. The idea is to keep the relationship contained within the safety of the therapeutic space.

You are in a loop right now of dismissing and rationalizing his behaviors. He isn't handling this in a way that is in your best interests. It's his job to protect your interests within this relationship. The longer this goes on, the more difficult separating from this relationship will be for you, Chisholm. I hope you will consider changing therapists.

[Guest SomethingOrOther]

There’s different things to answer to now.

First of all there’s the emails. I got the impression, from picking things up where I put my feet (that means basically from random input), that email exchange with a therapist is not common, but possible. Some use it only to rearrange appointments, I think there’s differences in whether the therapist answers the emails or not and I know of one respected individual who said that he answers all his clients emails, though the broader context of this discussion was crisis.

So, my impression is that therapists get to choose what they do with emails as long as it’s in accordance with the ethics code, i.e. confidential and not harmful and so on. I also imagine many therapists stay away from this, because of the limitations of written, not immediate, indirect, less controllable and containable communication. It’s difficult to know what face I’ve put on, isn’t it? Oh, no. That one was easy, actually. But the point is, it might be easier to verbalise things this way, but it’s also easier to get confused about things this way (both sides, mind you) and that might well add to the problem.

It’s great that you talked about your concern in the last session!

But tbh, I don’t quite understand where the discussion went from there. You were talking about boundaries and emails, he said that’s so you can verbalise more and then? Did he just dismiss it like that? Or is that why you then talked about Dean, and I just don’t see the connection? Would the emails then mainly be good for verbalising your anger? I would have thought he’d at least be willing to offer alternative ways to handle emails?! Why didn’t that happen? :-/

[tobeistohope]

About the writing of emails to a therapist: Mine encourages me to write emails as much as I want to between sessions so that someone will be hearing me, as we have opened up a lot of stuff. I do email him, probably 3-4 times a week, and during a bad week, much more. He does not answer the emails unless I ask a specific question and I need to know in order to be able to funtion throughout the week. Such as: I needed to know what transference was when I first experienced it and was quite despondent about it and emailed him and asked him for a response. And he did. And once I was concerned about confidentiality and he called me to assure me that "confidentiality runs true". I am glad he allows me the outlet of the emails between sessions, but he is very professional about it, and I am glad for that also because I think I trust him more for being professional and the fact that he is not willing for anything to get in the way of my therapy and healing. He takes care of this strange but healing relationship for my sake and for his, is what I feel

[Chisholm]

No, I think the emails are there to express mainly those issues that I struggle with verbalising - both my feelings for him/transference and in some respects anger as well - I do seem to have a problem with expressing that. He has always claimed that I am being "obtuse" about his feelings ie he knows that I know what he feels. I guess he thought I was being passive agressive by accusing him of only seeing me in a "physical/sexual sense" - I know it is far more than that and I guess my trust in that is what keeps me going back.

[Chisholm]

Funny - been rethinking that last sentence. Yes, I want to trust that, but perhaps that is exactly why I should not go back. Does love from a therapist have no place in therapy? He has a psychoanalytic background and I have been reading about Ferenczi.....

[IrmaJean]

I think he is playing with fire in this and that you are in danger. He has brought his feelings out in the open (or made some pretty clear insinuations about them) What positive purpose can this serve for you? How does this help you to learn about yourself? How does it help you in your outside of the room relationships?

I think there is a place for a therapist to act in a loving manner with a client, but this being of pure acceptance of another that is NOT romantic or sexual in nature. There is no place for that to be openly expressed/ acted out by a therapist. Those kinds of feelings are about his needs and not yours. And therapy is supposed to be about you...

[Chisholm]

Yes - I agree, therapy is supposed to be about me. Me - I want to learn that I am lovable - as a result of my past I have a lot of hang ups about my sexuality - believe it or not, I find his physical feelings affirming. The intimacy is pretty scary at times but it is so intoxicating and I just don't know how to tear myself away from that. Funnily enough, if I thoiugh that was all his feelings were about, I might not find the situation very affirming but I think he has very deep feelings and somehow I think he is walking the high wire to let me know that without falling foul of ethics - I just don't know how this is all going to end....

[malign]

I'm glad you came back to what I thought was the key word, a while back: "lovable".

I know, at one point in my life, I didn't feel lovable.

Then a therapist showed me that I was lovable. It's not surprising that the question arises, is this person "in love" with me. The idea of therapy is that a therapist with proper balance manages to show that they're not "in love" with us while still confirming that we're lovable.

Because the real point is that we're lovable by many people, not just the first person who shows us.

But if we get caught in the mistake that the therapist is "in love", or if by chance that actually occurs, we stay focused on the therapist, and end up concluding that they're the only one who can love us. That leaves the important lesson unlearned.

This is dangerous not because of anything you've done, but because it's just too likely that you'll be caught with the second, more important, part of the work unfinished.