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This week we talk about the ghosts we bring into
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every relationship. Halloween is the season when we entertain stories
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about ghosts, haunted houses, and spirits that refuse to leave.
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But the world of psychology offers a different kind of haunting,
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one that occurs every day in our most intimate relationships.
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Consider a woman whose husband forgets to call. She knows
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he's busy, yet she experiences her silence as an abandonment.
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Or a man who desperately wants affection, but he becomes
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uncomfortable whenever someone gets close. Why do seemingly ordinary experiences
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provoke such powerful reactions? Psychodynamic psychology suggests that we can
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carry internal relationships of the people who shaped us. Our
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earliest relationships influence how we interpret affection, disappointment, rejection, and
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intimacy long after childhood has ended. Melanie Klein has explored
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how our internal world becomes populated by emotionally significant figures.
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Heinz Kohut examined how relationships contribute to our sense of
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self-worth and psychological ability. And contemporary psychodynamic thinking invites us
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to consider how these emotional patterns emerge in adult relationships.
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Sometimes we aren't responding entirely to the person standing before us.
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We're responding to someone that person has unconsciously reminded of us.
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And perhaps that's why certain relationships feel so familiar even
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when we desperately wish they were different. This week, I've
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written a special Halloween essay. From my Substack, Psychodynamic Observations,
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The Ghosts We Bring Into Every Relationship. In the full article,
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I explore why we repeatedly find ourselves in familiar emotional situations,
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how childhood experiences influence our romantic expectations, and how psychotherapy
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can help us recognize the difference between the present-day disappointment
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and an old emotional wound. This essay is completely free
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to read, so visit Psychodynamic Observations on Substack and look
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for The Ghosts We Bring Into Every Relationship on October
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28th is when it's going to be released. So check
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it out, October 28th, because the most haunting relationships aren't
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always the ones we've lost.