Transference in Ministry and Life

This morning I have several appointments that will keep me engaged all morning.  I know myself that by the time I get time to write I will not have the brain power to do so.  One of the great problems with being a morning person!

This is a post from June I believe concerning a great ministry danger.  In my pastoral ministry, and even as a professor, I have seen this psychological state several time.  Each time it scared me.  Why?  Because it is so unhealthy for all involved.  I know most pastors or those in ministry who make it 20 years have seen this happen multiple times.  Yet, so few in the pew seem aware this condition exists.  

What am I talking about?  The problem of transference.  In our fallen world, people often latch on to an authority figure and transfer their feeling about another relationship onto the one in authority.  Such transference is not conscience.  Yet, it is all too real.  Let me explain it by quoting at length a section of David Hansen's The Art of Pastoring.

I'm gun-shy of people who like me too much.  I like compliments, but when someone starts treating me like I'm the best thing since indoor plumbing, I step back.

They get this look in their eyes when they say thank you.  It isn't adult gratitude or childlike delight.  It isn't a fair exchange of human love.  They're thanking me, but their eyes are focused past me.  They're thanking someone or something else.  Maybe an ideal I've resurrected.  It's unreal.

The relationship can appear normal.  Then, without warning, it shifts.  Their talk gets contradictory.  They thank Jesus but give me the credit.  Their speech is thick with spiritual lingo, but they treat me like I'm their savior.  I don't think they're talking about me or Jesus.  They're talking to someone or something I symbolize to them.  Psychologists call this transference.

Psychotherapists recognize that their relationship with patients run on a "double track."  "All feelings in relationships as we know understand them run on a double track.  We react and relate to another person not only on the basis of our conscious experience of the person in reality, but also on the basis of our unconscious experience of him in reference to experience with significant people in infancy and childhood- especially parents and other family members.  We tend to displace feelings and attitudes from these past figures onto people in the present, especially if the person in the present has features similar to the person in the past."

Pastors like therapists, evoke feelings in people that go way back into people's pasts.  "Feelings toward the therapist therefore stem not only from the real, factual aspects of the therapist-patient interaction, but also from feelings displaced onto the therapist from unconscious representations of people important to the patient early in his childhood experiences.  These displaced or transferred feelings tend to distort the therapist, making him appear to be an important figure in the patient's past; they create in one sense an illusion." ...

It is of no little consequence that in some traditions pastors are called "Father."  We are authority figures with love, so like it or not, we symbolize parents to people.  For adults who have had positive relationships with their parents, this creates little problem.  They have respect and love for their parents.  Likewise, they have a natural respect and love for pastors.

But in cases where the relationship with the parent was deeply faulted, people develop something like an ideal parental construct and transfer this to anyone like a parent- and especially someone who gives them love as their parent should have in the first place.  Parishioners can superimpose this ideal parental figure over the pastor; they "fall in love"- not with the pastor, but with the pastor as the incarnation of their ideal parental figure.  Then they shift the monumentally important childhood desire to please their parent, which was never satisfied by their natural parents, onto the pastor.

The compliments come fast and thick, and they express a strong and unreasonable desire to "help out any way they can."  They try to work harder than anyone else- and make sure the pastor knows it- to earn the pastor's love.  They want the pastor to appreciate them more than all others.

Parishioners caught in this unconscious process may undergo "conversion" experiences.  They may experience romantic changes and testify that they have been touched by God (never forgetting to add that it was through the pastor's ministry).  In psychotherapy this is called a "transference cure."  They do experience dramatic change, but it is motivated by the desire to please the pastor.  The results of these "conversions" diminish with time, especially once the period of intense positive feelings toward the pastor wanes.

And those feelings do disappear.  Alongside the deep reservoir of childhood desire to please the parents there exists a deep reservoir of anger at parents for all the hurt they caused.  This anger has no fixed object.  It is anger at parents, but children are not psychologically able to be angry at their parents for long.  Children cannot divorce themselves from the parental love they desperately need by showing or even admitting that they are angry.  But they can cut loose on someone who represents their parent.

Things can do along for quite a while, even years.  These people are accustomed to forgiving parental figures, so pastors can fail them now and then and they will forgive.  In fact, they will vehemently defend their pastor to others, even when the pastor is dead wrong.

Until something snaps.  There is no way to predict what will set it off, but suddenly, without warning, the pastor violates some code.  The pastor must pay.  These people's anger at their parents is unleashed on the pastor.

The pastor still symbolizes the parent, but now the parent being symbolized has shifted.  The pastor is no longer the ideal parental figure the parishioner loves.  The pastor is now the failed parent the parishioner hates.  Without warning, the pastor who yesterday represented all that was right in the world today represents all that is wrong in the world.  From Jesus to the devil in one hour.

Hansen, The Art of Pastoring, 124-127.

I told you it was a long quotation!  I think it is also an important point: in a fallen world, all is not as it appears or should be.  Even the most basic of relationship can become twisted and contorted.  We must be aware of this potential or we run the risk of ramming our life and ministry upon the shoals of brokenness and being ruined in the process!

Because of transference, most pastors, particularly ones who survive in ministry, are rather guarded about people who like them too much.  How do we judge "too much?"  There is no easy answer.  It is a weird feeling that something is wrong.  Often after being burned by the switch turning to "counter-transference" the pastor or leader is a bit gun-shy of people bringing too much praise.  Through time and experience, one begins to recognize that "look in the eye" of a broken person.

If you have been in ministry and you have been hurt by this process, please realize it was caused by brokenness and it is not all your fault!  I know the first time I experienced transference, I thought it was great.  I had made a friend and someone who truly appreciated by effort!  Then, when I experienced that "something snapped" moment, I wondered what I did wrong.  I really beat myself up over it!  You might react the same way.

If you do experience transference, I strongly recommend that you find an experienced pastor or leader to talk it over with.  It is likely they will share similar experiences.  Most importantly, learn from it!  A wise leader does everything possible to avoid the same mistakes.  Love but do not be anyone's savior.  Only Jesus can fulfill that job!

So, what do you think?  Do you struggle in your relationship with "authority figures" because you engage in transference?  Ask the Lord to give you some wisdom with this.  Find someone to talk to if this is your tendency because relationship wreckage will mark your life if you do not!

Transference is real.  It is a consequence of living and ministering in a broken world.  May the Lord give wisdom and grace to live through it, grow past it, and see true healing for those suffering with its consequences.