I was about to write about my five-year ordeal of working
nights, where the night desk slowly became a place of learning, study and
self-reflection for me. It also became, on several unfortunate occasions, a
place where I fell asleep and lost multiple jobs. If losing jobs because of
sleep was an Olympic sport, I would not only win the gold medal, I would
probably be asked to light the Olympic torch as well. Anyway, enough about my
chronic sleep problems before this turns into a medical referral.
While I was away for Eid, I took a few days to sit in the
library. The children had gone back to school, my wife had gone back to work,
and for the first time in a long while I had space to think about what those
years behind the desk had really taught me. After spending years reading
psychology, attending therapy and reflecting on myself, I thought I had learned
enough to understand people, navigate relationships, manage emotions and
recognise the hidden patterns that move between human beings. In other words, I
thought I had become some kind of budget Freud behind a concierge desk.
During that time, I learned how to help people, how to
listen, how to assist them, and slowly I began to notice one thing more clearly
than anything else: the true meaning of being seen after a very long time. One
of the first things this taught me was transference, and behind transference
there was often something deeper: a particular wound within the psyche. Freud
understood transference as the way earlier emotional patterns and unconscious
material can be repeated and reactivated in present relationships (Freud, 1912). Jung later deepened this idea by showing how transference can carry
symbolic and archetypal material, not simply personal history (Jung, 1946 / 1966).
When transference is not immediately visible, what may need
to be observed is the wound within the psyche. I learned this many years ago in
therapy: sometimes one person can sense the wound of another before anything is
directly spoken. Not through magic, not through mind-reading, and not because I
suddenly became Mystic Meg behind a concierge desk, but through resonance.
Something in one person recognises something in another. In psychoanalytic
terms, unconscious material does not always communicate itself directly; it may
appear through repetition, feeling, silence, projection and the atmosphere
between two people (Freud, 1914) and (Bollas, 1987).
A wound in the psyche is not necessarily somatic or
biological. It may be emotional, symbolic, relational or unconscious. It may be
carried in shame, silence, avoidance, longing, fear, repetition, or in a
person’s way of relating to others. Therapists are trained to listen for these
wounds, not only in what is said, but also in what is repeated, avoided,
defended against, or unconsciously communicated. In other words, sometimes the
wound does not walk into the room with a name badge on. It arrives quietly, sits
in the corner, and reveals itself through patterns. Rogers’ person-centred
approach also reminds us that deep psychological change often begins when a
person feels genuinely heard, accepted and understood (Rogers, 1961).
So I want to talk about this wound within the psyche.
Normally, during my time behind the desk, I noticed these psychological wounds
in others. The night shift gave me plenty of time to observe people, although
sometimes it also gave me plenty of time to observe the inside of my eyelids.
But it was very rare indeed to find somebody who could see my wound. When you
find a person whose wound resonates with yours, it is not simply a connection.
It can feel archetypal, because they appear to understand the deeper layers of
your emotional life without everything needing to be explained. That is what
makes it archetypal: something is understood before it is spoken. Jung’s idea
of the archetype points towards these deeper patterns within the psyche, where
personal experience connects with something larger, symbolic and collective (Jung, 1959/1968).
For many years, I had become used to being the one who
observed. The night desk trained me in silence, patience and attention. I
watched people arrive tired, anxious, proud, guarded, lonely or distracted, and
over time I began to understand that people often carry far more than they
reveal. A smile could hide grief, politeness could hide fear, confidence could
hide shame, and anger could sometimes be the surface of an older wound. But
when someone appeared to see something in me, something I had kept buried
beneath work, duty, family responsibility and survival, it disturbed me. It was
as if the role had suddenly reversed. I was no longer only the observer behind
the desk. I had become the one being observed, and in that moment I understood
how powerful, frightening and healing it can be to be truly seen.
However, I began to sense that this person carried a deep
wound, a wound that had not simply appeared overnight, but one that had
festered with time. I do not say this as a diagnosis or a certainty, but as
something I felt through presence, pattern and emotional resonance. It felt
like the kind of wound that had been pushed down, covered over and managed
quietly for many years, perhaps even mistaken for strength, independence or
emotional control. But wounds like this do not disappear because they are hidden.
They find other ways to speak. They appear in hesitation, guardedness, sudden
distance, longing, or in the need to be understood without having to explain
everything. There seemed to be an old ache there, something unresolved,
something that had perhaps waited a long time for the right conditions to
surface. And when such a wound meets another wound that recognises it, the
encounter can become emotionally charged, not because everything has been
spoken, but because something unconscious has already started whispering in the
background.
This is where archetypal transference comes in, because
sometimes one wound does not simply recognise another wound; it plays a note
upon it. It is almost as if something deep within one person touches a hidden
place in another, not through ordinary conversation, but through presence,
feeling, silence, timing and emotional resonance. The same wound can move
beneath different people in different forms, yet when it appears, it carries a
familiar vibration. This particular person seemed to play a note on a wound
within me that had been silent for a long time. It was not only that I felt
seen; it was that something buried, something I had carried through years of
night work, family duty, emotional survival and quiet endurance, suddenly
became alive in the presence of another. That is why the experience felt
archetypal. It seemed to belong not only to the surface of the relationship,
but to something deeper within the psyche.
Jung’s psychology of transference is useful here because it
shows that transference may contain symbolic force, emotional projection and
unconscious meaning (Jung, 1946/1966). Hillman also argued that psychological
life should not be reduced only to symptoms or ordinary personal explanations,
because the psyche often speaks in images, myths and deeper patterns of meaning (Hillman, 1975). This is why an encounter can sometimes feel larger than the
two individuals involved. It may touch something old, hidden and powerful. It
may awaken not only feeling, but story. It may begin to reorganise how a person
sees themselves and what they believe their life has been trying to tell them.
This is also why archetypal transference has the power to
disturb, awaken and even change the life script of both people involved. It can
make a person question who they are, what they have lived without, what they
have suppressed, and what kind of life they were always meant to move towards.
When this kind of transference carries love, longing and destiny within it, it
does not feel like an ordinary attraction. It feels as though life itself has
arranged an encounter between two wounded souls, each carrying something the
other recognises before words are even spoken.
The emotional energy can become overwhelming because it
feels larger than choice. It can feel like fate, like recognition, like love
arriving not from the surface of life, but from somewhere ancient and hidden
within the psyche. Attraction becomes charged with meaning. Healing becomes
wrapped in longing. Recognition becomes inseparable from love. Two wounded
people may begin to feel that they have found in each other the answer to
something they have carried for years: the ache of not being seen, the silence
of being misunderstood, and the deep desire to be known by someone who does not
need everything explained.
But this is also why archetypal transference must be
approached with great care. Love and destiny may be present, but so too are old
wounds, projections, unmet needs and unconscious longing. What feels sacred can
also become unstable if it is not reflected on with honesty and restraint. Such
an encounter can open the door to transformation, but it can also overwhelm the
people caught inside it. It must therefore be held carefully, not dismissed as
fantasy, but not rushed into blindly either, because when two wounds recognise
each other through love, the soul itself can begin to change direction.
This is where the difficulty lies. Ordinary transference,
when recognised in therapy, can be contained within a professional frame. It
can be named, explored, reflected upon and slowly understood. But archetypal
transference outside the therapy room is much harder to contain. There is no
therapist holding the frame, no clear boundary around the emotional field, and
no agreed language for what is happening. The two people may be left trying to
understand something powerful while also being caught inside it. Knox’s work on
archetypes and attachment is helpful here, because it connects Jungian ideas
with developmental and relational experience, showing how deep psychic patterns
may become active in emotionally significant relationships (Knox, 2003).
This does not mean that the experience is false. It means
that it must be treated with respect. Some encounters really do awaken the
soul. Some people really do arrive in our lives and reveal something we had
buried for years. Some connections really do feel destined, not because they
remove responsibility, but because they force us to confront the parts of
ourselves we could no longer ignore. Yet the danger is that the other person
becomes overloaded with symbolic meaning. They become the rescuer, the beloved,
the mirror, the missing part of the self, the answer to an old wound. At that
point, the person is no longer being seen clearly as a whole human being. They
are being seen through the force of the transference.
This is why reflection is necessary. Without reflection,
love can become possession, destiny can become obsession, and healing can
become dependency. But with reflection, the encounter can become meaningful
without becoming destructive. It can teach a person about their wound without
forcing them to act from the wound. It can reveal longing without making
longing the master. It can show a person where they have been emotionally
starved, without demanding that another person become the entire source of nourishment.
In the end, what I came to understand is that being seen
after a long period of emotional invisibility is not a small experience. It can
awaken buried feelings, old wounds and unfinished parts of the self that have
waited quietly beneath duty, survival and routine. The night desk had taught me
how to observe others, but this encounter taught me something far more
difficult: how to recognise what was being awakened in me. Archetypal
transference, especially when it carries emotional or romantic intensity, must
not be treated carelessly, because it can confuse the soul, disturb the mind
and pull two people into a story larger than either of them fully understands.
Yet if it is held with reflection, honesty and restraint, it can also become a
moment of deep learning. It can show us where we are wounded, where we still
long to be seen, and where life is asking us not simply to attach ourselves to
another person, but to understand the hidden places within ourselves.
References
- Bollas, C. (1987) The Shadow of the Object: Psychoanalysis of the Unthought Known. London: Free Association Books.
- Freud, S. (1912) ‘The dynamics of transference’, in Strachey, J. (ed. and trans.) The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume XII (1911–1913): The Case of Schreber, Papers on Technique and Other Works. London: Hogarth Press, pp. 97–108.
- Freud, S. (1914) ‘Remembering, repeating and working-through’, in Strachey, J. (ed. and trans.) The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume XII (1911–1913): The Case of Schreber, Papers on Technique and Other Works. London: Hogarth Press, pp. 145–156.
- Hillman, J. (1975) Re-Visioning Psychology. New York: Harper & Row.
- Jacoby, M. (1984) The Analytic Encounter: Transference and Human Relationship. Toronto: Inner City Books.
- Jung, C.G. (1946/1966) ‘The psychology of the transference’, in The Practice of Psychotherapy: Essays on the Psychology of the Transference and Other Subjects. 2nd edn. Collected Works of C.G. Jung, Vol. 16. Translated by R.F.C. Hull. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
- Jung, C.G. (1959/1968) The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. 2nd edn. Collected Works of C.G. Jung, Vol. 9, Part 1. Translated by R.F.C. Hull. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
- Knox, J. (2003) Archetype, Attachment, Analysis: Jungian Psychology and the Emergent Mind. Hove: Brunner-Routledge.
- Rogers, C.R. (1961) On Becoming a Person: A Therapist’s View of Psychotherapy. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.