Transference — The Monumental Moment

– The moment you see a family the first time, that is monumental. From the moment the family hears your name, they are already working up a notion of what you are about and what you can and cannot do, and what you will do. So let the, I’ve used the term transference, and people miss hear that. That has to do with the way transference is heard in the professions out there. So the transference gets used in some ways that I would consider to be terribly simplistic. But that’s the way the professions are. In general, I’ve thought of transference the way, the way it is used in the professions and in addition to that, ways that I would conceive it to be as conceived of, basically and theoretically. So when I would use the term transference, it would include all of that. It would include everything that would go into an analytic transference. And what is an analytic transference? An analytic transference is the same darn thing, but between a higher level person and a patient. In psychoanalysis, psychoanalytic practice probably spends more time trying to decide the strength of the patient ahead of time. So they don’t want anybody in psychoanalysis who’s gonna break down into some kind of a psychotic rumble, or something like that. So that the people who are considered analyzable are those whose problems are neurotic level. So that would be the traditional psychoanalytic transference would be the intense emotional attachment between a patient and an analyst when the patient is on a neurotic level. In terms of the scale, I would put these on, these are better individuated people. And remember, when I put in the scale, I was just trying to refine and make more detail out of what psychiatry has done for generations. So we talk about transference, that is between a neurotic level person, which would be much higher on the scale, and a analyst. And then below that, you have all these other kinds of relationships. All the way down to the one between the schizophrenic and the professional person, which has a lot more primitive stuff in it. And that’s what gets into this breach of promise stuff that I’m talking about. When a breach of promise works in a psychotic level, it works like a charm with the neurotic level stuff because everything that is in one relationship is in another, it’s just a matter of intensity. So when you work with chaotic families, you’re dealing with families with big psychological problems, big acting out problems, big physical problems, all of this, it’s just an increased version of what would be in a classical transference, or call it, what in the devil is classical transference? I don’t know, I’d come here and now saying it’s one with schizophrenia, because that is the ultimate. And that is the ultimate in which you are held responsible for being a predictable human being. And the psychotic person expects you to do wonders, and you can’t do it. There are certain things you can’t do. And it’s up to the therapist to define this in microscopic detail what you can do and what you can’t do. What you will do and what you won’t do. And from my experience, almost anybody can accept this if you’re specific about it. If you’re not specific about it, they will reject you and go away from you, and with good reason, because you didn’t live up to the image they had about you in the beginning.