Transference Revisited

Thank you for your thoughtful response. Your points are well taken. Certainly the relationship between the therapist and client is of the greatest importance; in rereading the piece I wrote, it struck me at first as glib of me to suggest that the PRIMARY transference relationship was between my client and either Mr. Basgalia or the client's friends; however, as I considered it again, I could not ignore that the therapeutic relationship had a different quality than the traditional therapist-client transference relationship. The points you make about the therapist's presence and dialogue indicating that someone was interested, apply more strongly with longer term therapeutic relationships. My experience with clients with personality disorders is that they are very slow to accept the therapist's interest and caring as genuine. Even if they rapidly develop an idealizing transference or dependency attachment, and appear to be "bonded" to the therapist they are very slow to accept that the therapist is genuinely interested in who the client truly is. The relationship I described in "Object Relations" involved about twenty sessions over a period of just under six months. Undeniably, his relationship with me was of great importance. Within five sessions he was describing the agony of his isolation in a manner that I doubt he had ever done before with anyone. My non-judgmental acceptance of him was certainly very meaningful for him. I think you are correct in interpreting this as a deepening of his vulnerability and trust with me. There was, however, a noticeable lack of the type of testing and distortions of the therapeutic relationship that I have encountered with clients with whom I have worked in a more traditional way. With a few of his friends, on the other hand there was a series of tests. At best, he expected them to react in a disinterested way when he shared an opinion; he thought it more likely that they would criticize or attack him. He took risks with them and felt increasingly safe with them. He was able to gradually separate them from his fantasy of the attacking object, and to share himself more deeply with them. Naturally this experience was extremely satisfying to him. My point here is that the working through of this client's distorted object relations happened in a variety of ways. It happened in his relationship with me, in the EMDR work he did, including the work focused on his manufactured relationship with Mr. Basgalia, and in his relationship with his friends. Perhaps the speed with which all this occurred has prevented me from appreciating the subtle changes that were probably occurring in his relationship with me, but I think one should not underestimate the importance of his working through of his object relations distortions in the context of these other relationships.

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