20-Minute Topic: Transference

     I want you to go ahead and try to imagine the word transference in a positive fashion. Go ahead, I'll wait...Nope? Didn't think so. Did it conjure into your cognitive facilities visions of bald, tattooed men reciting dark incantations? Ghosts preparing to enter a willing (or unwilling) mortal vessel? Fallen wizards laboring over golems made of flesh and steel? If not, you clearly haven't had enough culturin'.

 

     I don't know if this was always the case, mind you. The best we can do is just guess at this point. I think we need a better language, at this point. Just, like, a new one. This one is getting too hard to keep track of. Give me the bare necessities. I need words for like 6 things. Sandwiches, bathroom, sleep, pork-chops with garlic/butter sauce, underpants and technology. Sigh...I don't know how many people would actually agree with me there, though. I think we either need to simplify in the extreme, or else divide the current set of words into multiple parts based on the number of generally accepted meanings. This one has at least two that I know of.

     First, as may suspect it just means the act of transferring something from something into something else, something something something. You get the idea. The second meaning is the where its rep gets established. Huh...Didn't think I'd get to the bottom of that mystery so quickly, Scoob. Oh well. There is a whole laundry list of possible sub-definition associated with that one, and none of them scream “pleasant”. It's a psychological term used to describe various phenomena. Wikipedia them, if you want. I think I must have closed off those dark halls in my mind shortly after they were first opened back in college. Shudder...And now, they've been dredged up. So, thanks for that, I guess. I think we were reading about...Freud? Carl Jung? Sounds right. What an *******. Who's an *******, you ask? Yes, you are correct.

     Granted, one of the examples I recall seems both appropriate and just generally useful. Someone could, potentially, transfer feelings of mistrust or anger to another person because they resemble their ex-wife, that harpy. Why did you ever get married to her in the first place? Now you have a mental disorder that Jung diagnosed. But, now you've got to sleep in the bed you've made. Just make sure you don't make it someone like her again, if you catch my drift.

    Sigh...Let's talk about wizards again. No, wait...sigh...Now all I can imagine is an elderly, white-bearded fellow with a pointy hat, wearing a smoking jacket and discussing when a magic staff was and wasn't simply a magic staff. This is all your fault. Also, I think someone should probably draw that image and send it to me. Oh, and make sure he's wearing pants, too. Realized someone might take those instructions too literally. In short, I hate you all, and thank you for the horrible memories.