by Restin Wells
Chapter Ten
Infatuation is a mysterious, curious phenomenon everyone likes to fiddle with and observe in other people. It's sort of like love, but not as mature. It's another word for Transference, actually. It's just that the transference term brings in more of the clinical picture. We all realize that infatuation can be a little silly or overboard. But if it doesn't cause too much harm, it's fun to play with, sort of like surfing big waves at the beach. Yet, it can get downright scary when we see someone, or ourselves, acting like a fool, over-spending, or being a nuisance to somebody who doesn't want to be bothered. Or it can be agonizing to worship someone and never have enough of them.
So, infatuation, or transference, can be all different qualities of
involvement. I went on to learn that we don't select the people with whom we fall in love, as deliberately as we think. We don't usually decide to love,
in the infatuation way. We "fall" in love. And we can fall into hate, too. Racial prejudice, and most other pre-judgment of others, are expressing the
negative transference. The unconscious selects the people we thought we chose to admire, or couldn't help disliking. The person of our interest
somehow reminds of important unfinished business dwelling within the unconscious, which begins "sparking", and becomes stirred up with
questionings that seek resolution. We can get "all tangled up" with certain people who unconsciously remind us of entanglements that were with important
people in the past. But we are the last to know, or admit it, because it IS unconscious. The more someone decides, consciously or unconsciously, to
"just forget it" when conflicts in early life became unbearable, the more there will be strange feelings about certain people later in life that remind
of that. Yet, that repression, deciding to deal with something by not dealing with it, is initiated at such an early age, that it isn't the child's
deliberate choosing. It's a sort of protective service the mind employs for a child. A child needs help from wise adults to deal with trauma in a better
way. But if they are not there, or haven't learned themselves, it's most unfortunate. Sadly, this society falls way short in helping children learn
how to deal with hurt, anger, and grief. It's assumed everyone will be able to find a good adjustment; and if they fail, it's just unlucky for them.
I realized, about this time, how Dr. Tilden was important for the transference that I had for her. And not just to be the mother figure. I knew, on the adult level, that I could resolve the problems by working through the transference feelings. I was very dependent upon her, but dependent for healing as well as the needs of the inner child. My research into all that, and sorting out my feelings toward Dr. T, helped me so very much. I had a lot of apology for my childish dependency. It hurt my conscience so much that I could hardly bear it. But, where there is no transference, therapy can't happen. You can't work on a feeling if there is no feeling. You can't know what to do about love if you don't love. Neither can you learn to deal with anger if you aren't angry. That's why transference is so important in therapy. I really needed that deeper understanding of the dynamics involved in my case.
The pain and fear were still active, after I was discharged from the hospital, but something had happened. There had been a big change, a relief, that came from something I did. I began to have some hope for me. I was beginning to point in some direction. The fear, and sick feeling, were beginning to move around a little. They would listen up to something sometimes, instead of just gross entrenchment in nameless misery. I became very much engrossed in the endeavor to get a response. I could think of nothing else but search for words or ideas. A helpful suggestion could bring relief, while many others that seemed just as good would fall off like so many sticks against a wall. I could suggest I love Dr. T one moment, and get relief; but suggest it again in ten minutes, and get more fear. The same happened with saying I hated her. It was like trying to stay on the back of a wild horse. I had to go with it all costs, but had to get control of it somehow.
I sensed that the childishness within simply and purely needed what a child needs. She mistakenly believed Dr. Tilden was her own real mother come alive again. She desperately needed Dr. Tilden, and only her, the "chosen one", to be in the same home and do the things that a mother-person is expected to do. She needed attention, holding, caring, expressions of affection, promises to be there forever. I began to realize those were her barebones needs. But I also knew that was the one situation which could never really happen. I wasn't going to do anything out of order for an adult. I wasn't going to impose on Dr. T. It really wasn't so much because I was so moral, but that it was related to pride, and the pain of more rejection. In those days I was one of those, and I have known a few, who would literally die rather than humiliate myself. From my adult self, I knew those facts with as much hard certainty as the child knew she would die without Dr. T. Quite a set-up indeed!
Anyway, I found myself stuck on that roller coaster. There had been Contact, and I was being carried by the excitement of that news. It was as if I had tapped on the wall of a wrecked submarine, many fathoms deep, and had heard a faint tapping back. The response was unmistakably human. And that's all I needed to keep me going straight there. Then there was the rescue, and the emergence of the captive.. but, horror of horrors, a stunted, bizarre, alien form; an ugly infant that had been banished for decades.. a face twisted in rage and anguish. Now I have hold of it, to my dismay. I must do something about it. I fear it will kill me with its ferocity, and its uncanny ability to make me feel its fear. Its demands are all different.. its beliefs so strange.. and needs so primal, but the ability to point a gun to my head, so to speak. I became obsessed with mediation; with trying to initiate an inner dialogue. The infant thing hardly seemed able to understand language.. wouldn't listen to reason but insisted on its own way. I'm sure I looked sicker than ever to anybody looking on. Yet, for the first time, I was driving onto the road to recovery.
I was like Robinson Crusoe discovering Friday. It all reminded me of that sci-fi story, "Enemy Mine", about the American fighter pilot involved in a dog fight with a hideous, reptilian, alien-thing, pilot...where they both crash in the same vicinity on a strange planet, and end up having to confront each other, and learn to get along.
I, and the other self within, couldn't hide from each other anymore, couldn't keep from running into each other. We were making each other miserable...by being together, and by being apart. There must be some kind of reparations. We had to lay our contentious demands on the table, and come to kind of settlement.
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Restin Wells