Helping Professions, Countertransference and the Mask of Love

More than a generation ago, community activist and educator John McKnight described professional helpers as typically wearing a "mask of love," one that hid or obscured a countenance of hate. Anyone who has existed in a state of clienthood has quickly come to realize that more often than not the most caring of professional helpers will turn quite vicious when faced with "non-compliance" on the part of those they would claim to assist.

Of course the reason given, and there is almost always some validity to this, is that those helped are very difficult individuals to deal with. But most observers of this scene will at least recognize and acknowledge the all too common presence of narcissistic helpers for whom clients are a source of ego gratifying supply and often little else.

Yet even beyond this, I would suggest that our reaction as helpers and our experience as clients (and I have been both) is rooted in Freudian concepts of transference and counter transference. Of course, as helpers, we are all too ready to blame clients or others we would help, for projecting or transferring their  issues onto us, the sainted helpers. But are we ever ready to entertain the idea that our negative projections onto those we help arise from our own fears and in particular our overwhelming fear that from the seeming safety of "us" we might somehow become "them" or the other? Better to reject or even destroy than to risk solidarity or identification.

And surely this is the heart of the Christian gospel. This is so much more than noblesse oblige. We are called to step out of us and to become them. I am convinced that this is discipleship and that everything else is self-justifying bullshit. But hey, I'm just a client.

Just saying.