When our minds are involved in transference, we lose the ability to give people and things the benefit of the doubt; we swiftly and anxiously move towards the worst conclusions that the past once mandated. Unfortunately, to admit that we may be drawing on the confusions of the past to force an interpretation on to what’s happening now seems humbling and not a little humiliating: surely we know the difference between our partner and a disappointing parent, between a husband’s short delay and a father’s permanent abandonment, between some dirty laundry and a civil war? The business of
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