the countertransference

Music: Stereolab: Space Age Bachelor Pad Music (1992) For seminar today I have been reading Aldo Carotenuto's edited collection of diary entries and letters, A Secret Symmetry: Sabina Spielrein Between Jung and Freud. The collection is a disturbing portrait of a very troubled yet brilliant woman taken from Russia and placed in the care of Jung. Jung had a terrible tendency to let the transference go "all the way," and they soon had an affair. It is clear that "his" idea of the anima was actually Spielrein's idea, which he stole. Nevertheless, Jung decided to cut off relations and Spielrein transferred her affections to Freud, with whom she had a long, lettered correspondence (the editors and translators conjecture the death drive was also Spielrein's idea). During her treatment Spielrein did improve and gradually became a well-regarded psychoanalyst herself. The Jung/Freud/Speilrein relation is an excellent example of the "bizarre love triangle" of hysteria---and an object lesson in why hystericization should not always be the direction of therapy.

One of the greatest difficulties psychoanalysis has faced, it seems to me, resides in the biographical lives of its many proponents: all these white patriarchs screwed (with) their patients, and serially (and in Jung's case, with the blessing of his wife). (As a caveat, one might say this is also the case with psychoanalysis in rhetorical studies: a number of its proponents have been accused of screwing [with] their students too.) Reading Janice Hocker Rushing's Erotic Mentoring, it would seem the same was true of women in the university pre-Anita Hill across the board. Readers who are from the younger generations should read Janice's book, because it explains a who freakin' lot about the weirdo dynamics of the academy (especially the discipline formerly known as Speech Communication).  Like the clinic, the mentoring relationships of graduate education are scenes of the taboo and transgressive love because the transference is the ground upon which one is supposed to learn; the firewall for countertransference would be, presumably, something called "ethics" or, more naturally, something called "age."

Why do people talk when a patient and doctor get close? Why does the APA disown you if you marry a patient? Or closer to home, why do tongues wag when a student and teacher begin dating? It's because people suspect that these kinds of attraction are less about "true love" and more about transferential power. Now, there would be some purchase to these suspicions were it not the case that all types of love are transferential. There is no escape from our projections; one falls in love because of a ruse and a false or empty promise---"love's deception" that you can be made "whole." There is, as it were, only the escape hatch of enjoyment---and thank freakin' goddess for enjoyment---but that's when things can get irresponsible.

Speaking of irresponsible enjoyment: last night I did watch the interview with Debra Lafave, the hottie 20-something that got down and dirty with a sweaty, athletic, 14 year old "boy" (yeah, I was that age once and I daresay I would not describe myself as a "boy"---nor athletic for that matter--but whatever). I had hoped it would reveal some very interesting insights into the countertransference. I had hoped the woman would at least defend herself just a teensy bit: look, young athletic 14 year old boys who lift weights and get all sweaty in front of you can be hot; it's not like this kid was a prepubescent. I mean, I've seen The Jerry Springer Show and I know some 14 year olds can look like they are all grown up---smoking fags, drinkin' beer, and getting tatoos. So I had hoped the woman would realize that feelings of attraction were "normal," not pathological (she copped to the cloudy mind of bipolar disorder), and it was what she did with them that was not right. Nope: she disowned her attraction, thereby dismissing the transference and countertransference as the dynamic of pedagogy in all its forms. Oh well. bell hooks aside, a guess we're still not ready to confront the erotics of education in any serious way.

I guess the interview only confirmed what many probably suspected: if the twin geniuses of psychoanalysis couldn't even handle their countertransferential energies---irreparably damaging lives in some cases---then what does one expect a not-so-bright 23 year old to do with it? "I crossed the line," said Lafave to Matt Lauer in the interview. Smart woman, she was. I was bored.