Transference - the phenomenon by which feelings,
perceptions, responses attributable to past significant relationships (parents,
siblings etc) are re-experienced inappropriately in relationships in the
present.
I was writing an essay a few years ago on Transference and
Countertransference... and as I was writing I began thinking about online
relationships. Dr Sigmund Freud identified the existence of transference in his
early psychoanalytic work, though he only recognised this as occurring within
the therapeutic relationship. We now understand that some level of transference
probably occurs in most, perhaps all of the relationships we form.
It's basically about responding to someone in the here and
now, as if they were a person from our past - reliving feelings from the past -
so a simple example might be - the policeman who pulls us over to tell us we
have a back light out becomes the over-critical father from our childhood - and
the sensations we experience as we see him approach our car will be the same as
those we felt as a child when we got something wrong and had to face our father
- so we might feel guilt, shame, a sense that we're being unfairly judged - all
this, even before the policeman has said a word. And it happens because these
powerful feelings remain unresolved yet suppressed within us and certain
triggers at various times will reawaken them.
Psychodynamic therapists are mindful not to bring anything
of themselves into the client/counsellor relationship - to actively avoid
self-disclosure, to keep the therapist's own personality completely out of the
working relationship, to be the proverbial blank screen, and this creates a
void which the client will unconsciously fill with their own fantasies (both
positive and negative) - the therapist can become the representation of mother,
father, sister, lover, teacher and so on.
Thinking about the encounters we have online - there is
always an inevitable and undeniable void - however much a person writes, tries
to convey who they are and what they're like, it's just words on a screen -
there's no physical presence at all for us to pick up, interpret, get a sense
of how they are responding to us - there's no energy. And because it's hard for
us as human beings to acknowledge that void, just as in counselling, we fill it
with our fantasies - all the bits we don't know we fill in for ourselves.
So for instance with online dating, we have a picture of
this person - often just one single image of them, usually just a head and
shoulders shot. That gives us an idea of their face but it doesnt really show
us how tall they might be, how large they might be, what sort of hands they
have or how big their bum is! And yet as we get to know this person - we start
to form a more comprehensive picture of what they might look like in our minds,
what we'd like them to look like. How often have I heard people say they'd got
to know someone from an online dating website, felt really comfortable with
them - things progress and they decide to meet up and.............. the person
sitting there in the restaurant or waiting outside the cinema is NOTHING like
they imagined. Sometimes that can be quite extreme and shocking - the woman is
clearly 10 years older than her picture, the man who had a full head of hair in
his profile is suddenly bald! And at that point all the dreams, all the
fantasies come crashing to the floor - we feel betrayed, foolish, embarrassed
etc etc... In fact even when a person has been careful not to mislead, the
character standing on the other side of the road waiting for us will not be the
man or woman we've dreamt up in our head - they cant be, because the picture
was painted by ourselves, with relatively little to go on except a lifetime of
past experience to be influenced by. And the same thing is true of
personalities - it's impossible to form an accurate understanding of what this
person is like, their mannerisms, their strange little ways... just from words
on a screen.
But perhaps that's the appeal of it - while we're getting to
know 'John from Exeter' he can become our ideal man and for a while we can live
the dream - perhaps we always know it's unlikely to go beyond a couple of
dinners or trips to the movies - because he's going to have an irritating laugh
or a wandering eye or a habit of looking at his watch every 10 minutes??
Now in contrast, first encounters when we meet someone on a
train for example are completely different to that. Almost never do those first
meetings extend beyond the duration of the train journey however appealing this
stranger opposite might be, and there are many good reasons for that. Perhaps
part two of this piece should start... 'When we sit down opposite someone on a
train........'
No comments:
Post a Comment