mentoring: stylin' the transference?
Music: Siouxsie & the Banshees: Superstition (1991)
In the introduction to one of my favorite books, The Vampire Lectures, Larry Rickels describes his pedagogy as "stylin' the transference." He means to refer to "the transference," a term that Freud originally used to describe how the relationship between an analyst and an analysand (or patient) is established. In therapy, Freud noticed how his clients' affect became increasingly intense toward him: sometimes they would make romantic overtures; sometimes, they would speak to him in a manner that either reflected an intense hatred or affection for a parent. At first Freud thought these feelings were a form of resistance, however, he came to believe that their appearance in therapy was actually a sign of progress.
Eventually, in classical psychoanalysis the transference came to denote the way in which a patient "transfers" feelings for an earlier parental figure on to the analyst. For Freud, one of the goals of analysis was for the analyst to channel this strong affect in productive ways, "working-through" the transference so that the analyst no longer represents a parent or lover.
Rickels' joke about teaching as "stylin' the transference" extends Freud's observation to the classroom. As I've written on this blog before (here, here, and here), teaching attempts to establish a transferential relation between the teacher and the student: by accepting the affect typically reserved for a parental figure, the teacher attempts to channel it into learning course material (en loco parentis, indeed). In other words, it's because the student believes that you care about them as a person that they want to do well in the course. It's hard to learn from a teacher who doesn't seem to give a shit; one is motivated to do well and learn, in part, because one cares about the recognition or approval of the teacher. In short, students learn because they (desire) love.
Of course, there are other models of teaching as well, but in our culture it does seem like "stylin' the transference" is often the ideal (most films about teaching, and even the show Boston Public, hold up the good parenting model of teacherly heroism). Hollywood also holds up the "sexy teacher" figure as well, of course, and that has been the focus of my previous posts on this topic: working closely with a student creates the transference and countertransference, and loving feelings and attraction can develop. This is normal. The ethical response, however, is to "work through" such feelings but not to act on them. The teacher/student sex scandals seem to pop up year after year, and what we find is a teacher incapable of understanding that his or her feelings of attraction are normal---you just don't ACT on it. I've discussed this extensively in past posts, so I won't go into the topic any more than to say that overkill with guilt leads to backfiring; feelings are ok, and normal. Acting on them is where ethics come into all of this . . . .
What I do want to raise, however, is the flip side of the same coin: the mentor as parent. Unlike sexualization (a la Van Halen's "Hot For Teacher"), one culturally sanctioned way of dealing with one's feelings toward a teacher is to begin seeing them as a mother or father figure. Given the longstanding notion of the university as a surrogate locus of parenting, this figuration isn't surprising at all, and I'm noticing that as I get older, my own teaching relations with my students gets easier as I settle in closer to this model. I say this is the "flip side" because, you know, affect is affect, erotic or familial---and dreams often disregard the incest taboo (I'm thinking here of a mentor thirty years my senior who I always consciously took as a parental figure but who, one starling night, appeared as a lover in a dream . . . if you're an academic, you've had this kind of disquieting dream at least once!). My point is that at some level of consciousness affect doesn't obey the handy distinction between physical and intellectual attraction.
In any event, I think in the academic setting---especially at the graduate level---we tend to think of the advisee/mentor relationship in familial terms. In part, this is a legacy of the German educational system; my friend Mirko tells me it is common for folks to trace their "family tree" in terms of advisors o'er there in Germany. Much of this has to do with the need for a "rooting" in some sort of intellectual legacy, of course. But much of it has to do with wanting to be loved---wanting to be recognized by an elder whom you admire. If we understand love as a form of recognition, in other words, the apprentice model of the academic enterprise builds its reward system around love.
When I think about my own graduate experience, I vividly remember wanting the attention and approval of my mentors. Sometimes a critical remark from them would literally make me queasy, so important it was to win their approval. I'm thinking here of Robert L. Scott and Karlyn Kohrs Campbell, in particular, both of whom were and remain very good at getting students to "work through" and move beyond this craving for parental love students foist upon them. They are also capable of evoking powerful responses of love and hatred from graduate students (indeed, a tell-tale sign of a graduate advisor "stylin' the transference" is the confusing "I hate them/I love them" factor; how many of us know someone who cursed the very ground their advisor walked on during the dissertation process, but them praised them with love after the degree was in hand?). I took to calling RL "pop" and Karlyn "mom" at the end of my tenure at Minnesota, in part jokingly, but also in part because I could see how I fashioned myself a make-shift "family" to make the graduate school process endurable.
Some weeks ago on this blog, and also in conversation recently, I discussed with a friend this theory. She noted that while my thinking is convincing theoretically, "on the ground," in practice, it overlooks some practical, real world concerns. Likening one's advisor to a "mother" or "father," for example, encourages a view of advisorly responsibility that is long outmoded and rooted in a patriarchal system: students do not need to be "mothered" or "fathered." Rather, they need to be mentored. Using paternal metaphors to describe the mentoring risks reinforcing irritating, if not harmful, expectations. I understand and even agree, to some extent, with this view. Over the past six years I have watched departments, my own and that of others, admit students who were clearly in need of "social rehabilitation." I personally do not want to "parent" students in graduate school; that's not my job!
Nevertheless, I'm interested in hearing what y'all think about this topic: what are the burdens of the parental expectation? What is mentoring to you? Is my argument about "stylin' the transference" as the actual norm of teaching plausible (even if we don't use the same language or lean on Freud)? Thoughts? Reservations? New dance moves?