Transference in Online Relationships? (user submitted)

Dear AmateurShrink,

What are your thoughts on transference and countertransference with particular regard to online friend/relationships?

Attentively yours,

Lustful in London

~ ~ ~

Dear Lustful,

Lets quickly define the terms tranference and counter-transference. Webster's defines transference as "a reproduction of emotions relating to repressed experiences, esp[ecially] of childhood, and the substitution of another person ... for the original object of the repressed impulses." In other words, I was mad at my father, but I'm taking it out on you, or, you were afraid of some guy, and now you're afraid of me. While transference implies a patient projecting feelings onto a therapist, counter-transference contemplates the reverse situation.

Transference is interesting, but not as interesting as it's hot sister, erotic transference. Erotic transference happens when patients fall in love with their therapists. Remember that this idea is Freudian, so we have to start from infancy, where you only had five major psychological disorders. The sequence goes something like this:

1. Baby needs mother's attention to survive.

2. Mother gives baby attention. Baby becomes attached to mother and fixates on her.

3. Baby craves mother and feels "love."

4. Mother has other things to do in her life and must occasionally neglect baby's needs.

5. (Cry)Baby is distraught and represses traumatic breach with mother. Wah!

6. Baby grows up, gets into several dysfunctional relationships, starts smoking crack, becomes a prostitute, and changes her name to Trixie.

7. Trixie visits Therapist seeking advice.

8. Therapist is attentive to Trixie's feelings and needs.

9. Trixie is reminded of the attention she received from her mother, back in 1-3.

10. Trixie transfers the feelings of love she felt for her mother onto Therapist and now begins fixating on him.

11. Therapist says "it must have been hard to be disappointed when you were a child" to coax Trixie into releasing the trauma incurred when she was disappointed by her mother in 4.

Interesting, huh? I don't buy it, but it's interesting. I think it's more likely that we evolved certain fixed emotional "programs" to help us cling to our caretakers, and that these program are executed when we meet new caretakers. But I don't really think that we're thinking about our mothers when we meet these people, and I don't think we need to rehash past traumas. That only reinforces and validates weak, needy living. Instead, tell the person that their feelings make sense, but that real love is something that grows out of independence, not neediness.

Okay, finally, lets get back to your question. Can transference happen in online relationships? It probably happens in all your relationships in some mild form. If you've been rejected by a guy, you'll transfer some of your hurt and fear onto the next guy you meet and perceive him as untrustworthy. Same goes if you're angry.

And what about the erotic type? Look, if you're attracted to me, just say so.