When the Past Is Present

Healing the Emotional Wounds that Sabotage our Relationships
By David Richo

David Richo examines transference — the largely unconscious tendency to project feelings, needs, and expectations from past relationships onto people in the present. Drawing on decades of psychotherapy practice, the book helps readers recognize when old wounds are distorting current relationships, and explains how strong emotional reactions often signal unresolved material from childhood or earlier partnerships. Mindfulness serves as the central tool throughout — for staying present, identifying repetitive patterns, and working through the emotional residue that blocks genuine intimacy.

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Concepts
  • Transference
    The largely unconscious process of projecting feelings, needs, and expectations formed in past relationships (especially childhood) onto people in the present, distorting how we perceive and react to them.
  • Compulsion to Repeat
    The psychological pattern in which unresolved emotional wounds draw us into situations that mirror the original pain, as an unconscious attempt to finally master or heal it.
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  • From Transference to Transformation
    Richo's framework for using the awareness of transference not just to stop reacting, but as an opportunity for genuine healing and expanded capacity for intimacy.
Chapters
  • Chapter 1. What Is Transference?
  • Chapter 2. What Transference Does and Why
  • Chapter 3. Ways We Can Be Together
  • Chapter 4. Reactions and Reacting
  • Chapter 5. How Our Fears Figure In
  • Chapter 6. Our Compulsion to Repeat
  • Chapter 7. Memories of Mistreatment
  • Chapter 8. The Physical Dimension
  • Chapter 9. Our Yearning for Both Comfort and Challenge
  • Chapter 10. Mirrors and Ideals
  • Chapter 11. Why I Love You But Don't Really See You
  • Chapter 12. Noticing Transferences in Our Relationships
  • Chapter 13. From Transference to Transformation
  • Chapter 14. Transferring beyond the Personal
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Published
  • July 22, 2008
Publisher
  • Shambhala Publications
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