Is it true that you fall in love with your psychotherapist?

In therapy, not only are very deep feelings and emotions shared, but there is often a tendency to idealize the professional relationship with the psychotherapist. It may happen that he is seen as a person of integrity, understanding, as a guide and a bearer of good feelings and hopes.

Sometimes the psychotherapist is the first person to treat someone with respect and consideration. Don’t think this is an exaggeration at all. There are many who have emotional shortcomings and have not found love from those around them.

When they have not been mistreated, they have felt rejection, indifference and abandonment. This applies not only to those who have spent their early years in hospice, but also to those who apparently have a home or have been supposedly pampered.

A complex bond is established with the psychotherapist. They can become the person you trust the most, who knows you best, who best understands and accepts you.. But still, he is not someone who is part of your life. Furthermore, the encounter you have with him or her is based on the need for professional treatment for your discomfort or suffering.

“For most people, the problem of love consists fundamentally in being loved, and not in loving, not in one’s own capacity to love.”

–Erich Fromm–

The usual thing is that your psychotherapist awakens many feelings in you. Among them, of course, an apparent infatuation. However, from some perspectives, it is an important part of the cure. The opposite is also the case, especially among poorly trained psychologists: they fall in love or develop feelings for their patients.

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The psychotherapist, an enigmatic figure

The bond between a patient and his psychotherapist is not symmetrical. This means that it does not occur on equal terms. You are going to consult it because you need to put your most intimate sufferings and discomforts on the table. Instead, he must restrict the information he gives about himself and maintain a position of certain neutrality regarding what you entrust to him.

This asymmetry guarantees that the therapeutic bond is maintained, but, at the same time, it raises a series of fantasies in the consultants. You never really know who your psychotherapist is, so you can attribute the greatest virtues in the world to him or her.

Who is with you in a session is not really the person, but the professional. But you easily forget it. So he may seem like the smartest guy on planet Earth and the one who meets your expectations perfectly.

You forget that, to a large extent, The success of your therapy depends on the psychotherapist not reacting to your words or attitudes. Maybe in ordinary life I would. But in the therapeutic space he assumes a different position, listening in some approaches, or guiding in others, but trying to act as a professional, not as your peer.

The psychotherapist can also inspire hatred, pity, fear in you., rejection, distrust, surprise… In short, all kinds of sensations or emotions. But that depends more on what you have inside, than on what the professional does or says.

Falling in love, a diffuse feeling

One of the first to detect this kind of infatuation of patients towards the psychotherapist was Sigmund Freud.. The father of psychoanalysis noticed that after a period of treatment, his patients began to show signs of romantic attraction towards him.

The attitude of the professional and the response of the patient

The professional can be quiet and still and, as a result, one patient accuses him of indolence, while another appreciates his silence. To the first, the professional’s passivity reminds him of a distant mother and in the therapeutic process this conflict is present. The second, on the other hand, unconsciously transfers to his psychotherapist the anguish generated by a father who never let him speak.

These are just two examples, but they have in common the fact that the figure of the psychotherapist becomes an object toward which unresolved conflicts are directed from the patients. Broadly speaking, that is the reason why it is common for there to be idealization and the consequent falling in love with the psychotherapist.

It is a matter that must be addressed during the sessions, directly and without embellishment. Likewise, every patient should know that if they fall in love with their psychotherapist and they reciprocate, what triumphed was probably not the force of love, but the illness or malaise that the consultation aroused.