Family Identity Issues During Holidays

Practicing Mindfulness Helps with Transference Confusions

Dec 6, 2008

Holiday celebrations and relationships can be loaded with confusions from transference. Keeping the past in the past and welcoming the present keeps love and joy alive.

Over the holidays there are often intense feelings of nostalgia for times past. When this happens one can be engaged in endless comparisons between what is happening now and what happened years ago. This can lead to more stress and even sadness during the holiday season. One seems to be missing something but can't really name what it is one is missing out on. This is largely because transference is in play.

One could say the entire holiday season is one large transference. This means that more often than not other people and events are seen in terms of one’s own past. Thus, there is an intense need to recreate the same magic of one's childhood for one's own children; or, conversely, to create the magic one feels was missed out on in one's own childhood.

Or there may be strong transfers onto people one meets for the first time. This new "stranger" might seem to possess qualities either experienced from others (mostly from original family members), or longed to experience but never did. All of this comes into play in meeting new people and greeting the holiday season.

"I and Thou" versus "I and my Idea of You"

Psychologically as well as spiritually, it seems the great purpose in life is to engage in meaningful relationships. In relationship one can achieve that higher purpose which is to know oneself and be able to truly love another for who they are. This cannot happen as long as the relationships are what Jungian therapist and author David Richo calls “unconscious re-treads of the past.”

“In our transference onto someone, the other person is a holder of our history, our unconscious. A true you-I moment is one in which transference and projections vanish and all we see is the real person,” writes Richo. When a relationship between two people has finally moved beyond projection and transference, the four As are in play. What are these?

The Four As: The Basis of Loving Relationship

Contrary to this, when one is engaged mostly with the “idea” of that person or event and not the real person or event, one can feel out of touch with the person and out of touch with the here and now. One is in love more with the idea of love than with the person. One is caught in the past rather than tasting and touching the present. The radiance is in the here and now, always.

Finally, Practice Mindfulness

Becoming aware of the transference that is in play and being mindful of this occurrence can go a long way in helping bring awareness and honesty back to any relationship and to make the holidays special again. To see and genuinely accept our loved ones as they truly are, in all their goodness as well as human foibles, is the true gift of the holiday spirit.

Many of the ideas here have been gleaned and digested from David Richo's brilliant book on transference called When the Past is Present; Healing the Emotional Wounds That Sabotage Our Relationships. Published by Shambahla in 2008.

The copyright of the article Family Identity Issues During Holidays in Analytical Psychology is owned by Megge Hill Fitz-Randolph. Permission to republish Family Identity Issues During Holidays in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.