![[dr. bob]](/dr-bob-sm.gif)
Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
bob@dr-bob.orgShown: posts 1 to 6 of 6. This is the beginning of the thread.
Posted by pegasus on February 21, 2006, at 19:43:18
I've been rereading "A General Theory of Love", and I came across an explanation of transference that I found very interesting. Before I quote it, though, I need to give some background.
The book talks (among other things) about how experience and genetics create neural pathways in our brains. Some become especially strong and therefore more easily followed. So, that's why habits form, and why one thought associates to another -- the corresponding neurons actually become physically connected along these pathways. These strong neural pathways are called "Attractors". They make up the way our brains work. The section I'll quote discusses the limbic brain, where emotion originates.
So, here's what the book says about transference:
"The limbic brain contains its emotional Attractors, encoded early in life. Primal bias then forms an integral part of the neural systems that view the emotional world and conduct relationships. If the early experience of a limbic network exemplifies healthy emotional interaction, its Attractors will serve as reliable guides to the world of workable relationships. If a diseased love presents itself to a child, his Attractors will encode it and force his adult relationships into that Procrustean bed . . . A person's emotional experience of the world may not budge, even if the world around him changes dramatically. He may remain trapped, as many are, within a virtuality constructed decades ago -- and, as Mark Twain observed, a person cannot depend on the eyes when imagination is out of focus.
"Limbic Attractors spawn a vexing and fascinating aspect of emotional life -- "transference," Freud's term for the universal human tendency to respond emotionally to certain others as if they were figures from one's past. Freud thought transference living proof that a banished memory can escape confinement and hover before a loved one's features, overshadowing a present angel with a past devil or vice versa.
Science has a way of supplanting myths with no less fantastic truths: tranference exists because the brain remembers with neurons. . . . because human beings remember with neurons, we are disposed to see more of what we have already seen, hear anew what we have heard most often, think just what we have always thought. Our minds are burdened by an informational inertia whose headlong course is not easy to slow. As a life lengthens, momentum gathers. . . . No individual can think his way around his own Attractors, since they are embedded in the structure of thought."
What do you think?
I really recommend this book in general to anyone interested in how the mind works. Although, sometimes I wonder whether the authors are presenting the building blocks of their theory as facts when they are perhaps still debated among those doing research in this field.
Peg
Posted by sleepygirl on February 21, 2006, at 19:53:01
In reply to A transference explanation (long), posted by pegasus on February 21, 2006, at 19:43:18
interesting alebit complicated stuff :-)
We are seriously complicated aren't we?
I read something once that sort of tried to build a bridge between mind and the brain, the unconscious and circuitry of the brain...
it was "The Right Brain and the Unconscious"
- something about replaying stuff laid down in the brain, your post made me think of it
Posted by Daisym on February 21, 2006, at 23:07:13
In reply to A transference explanation (long), posted by pegasus on February 21, 2006, at 19:43:18
The latest edition of National Geographic has an article about love and nueral pathways. Turns out that the same place we experience love is also the pathway/home of attachment. (Not a big surprise to us, right?)
In my studies about attachment, it is clear that the capacity to securely attach to a self-object lays down the foundation for future relationships within the brain structure. I think we can further understand frozen age states by understanding that feelings don't necessarily listen to our thought reality.
Posted by sleepygirl on February 21, 2006, at 23:21:16
In reply to Re: A transference explanation (long), posted by Daisym on February 21, 2006, at 23:07:13
any books or stuff you can recommend to read Daisy?
Posted by pegasus on February 24, 2006, at 9:09:32
In reply to Re: A transference explanation (long), posted by Daisym on February 21, 2006, at 23:07:13
Thanks, Daisy.
Wouldn't you know, I just let my subscription to Nat'l Geo lapse. I'll have to go get that issue.
This conversation also reminds me of an interview I heard recently on NPR with the author of "Why we love: the nature and chemistry of romantic love".
Sounds like I have a lot more good reading to do.
I'm glad they are doing such interesting research on these things. It doesn't change how I feel, but it does help me understand and accept it a bit more.
peg
Posted by pegasus on February 24, 2006, at 9:11:22
In reply to Re: A transference explanation (long) » pegasus, posted by sleepygirl on February 21, 2006, at 19:53:01
Thanks sleepygirl! I'll check it out. I've just got a bee in my bonnet about this issue lately.
I think I'm trying to figure out what the heck happened with my very strong attachment to my ex-T. It's been two years since I last spoke with him, and I still feel that attachment.
Peg
This is the end of the thread.
Psycho-Babble Psychology | Extras | FAQ
Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
bob@dr-bob.org
Script revised: February 4, 2008
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/cgi-bin/pb/mget.pl
Copyright 2006-17 Robert Hsiung.
Owned and operated by Dr. Bob LLC and not the University of Chicago.