I have a cyber alter ego identity call the Doctor of Love. (if you want to receive communication from the Doctor of Love send me your mobile phone number).
I chose that title as I think it reflects quite well what a psychologist or psychotherapist does. From a purely business point of view the product we sell is love. We sell love to our clients. And it works if handled correctly. If the client develops feelings of love and feels loved then that can have quite powerful and profound therapeutic effects.
It’s a natural process, a client falling in love with the therapist. Carl Rogers identified it many years ago and called it ‘agape’. In more modern times it’s referred to as the erotic transference. Basically the same concept with a different title. Some clients will naturally develop such love feelings for the therapist.
Why would that happen?
One could surmise, the unconscious of some/many people know intuitively that developing such feelings will result in positive growth and healing for them, and in many cases that can happen. The Free Child ego state intuitively knows this and hence such feelings developing in the therapeutic relationship have been noticed by therapists for many years and written about endlessly.
Some will swim through icy waters because
they seek the love they think will heal them.
However it is not all what it seems for the therapist. Whilst it might be nice for the ego to believe that these people have fallen in love with you, alas it is not the case. The client does not fall in love with the therapist, they fall in love with what the therapist represents to them. That is going to be different to the reality, at times very different to the reality of who and what the therapist is as a person.
Most often clients only see therapists in a very restricted way. The therapeutic relationship is a very myopic one. Often the client has only ever met the therapist in one room – the therapy room. And they only know the therapist as a person in a minimal way. So they automatically and unconsciously fill in the gaps of what the therapist is like as a person. Knowing Intuitively that if they develop love for the therapist then they could grow and heal they tend to fill in the gaps with positive personality features that will result in love developing in the client for the therapist.
How can you fall in love with a person when you have never even really seen their face?
They don’t fall in love with the therapist, instead they fall in love with a shadow of a person where they fill in the gaps with positive personality features. If they actually lived with the therapist they would find out that some of those fill-ins are quite inaccurate