The Gaze

I recently finished reading Kathryn Harrison's memoir, "The Kiss" which details a very sad and very abusive relationship with her father. I came across this passage which shows her hunger for her dad, which I think is beautiful and relatable. I think that her yearning for him was confusing and overpowering but also innocent. Her father, on the other hand, took advantage of her vulnerability to abuse her.

Anyway, taking the context away, I am very much in love with this passage and her raw way of describing the feeling. In particular, the way she describes his "gaze" is important to me. Growing up, I was never really seen by my family. Not in the real sense of the word. My T's gaze is the first time I felt like I was being seen. My yearning for T is not unlike Kathryn's innocent yearning for a father she never had.

“Intelligent eyes, enraptured eyes, luminous, stricken, brilliant, spellbound, spellbinding eyes. I don’t know it yet, not consciously, but I feel it: my father, holding himself so still and staring at me, has somehow begun to see me into being. His look gives me to myself, his look reflects the life my mother’s wilfully shut eyes denied. Looking at him looking at me, I cannot help but fall painfully, precipitously in love. And my loving him is inseparable from a piercing sense of loss. Whenever I am alone…I find myself crying. How am I to endure this new despair? How can it be that I am 20 years old, that I’ve grown up without a father, only to meet him now when it’s too late, when childhood is over, lost?”

Maybe some of you can relate to this.

No I can't relate to that quote.

The wording seems to simplistic to what I feel

Yes, I can relate.

PrevT - when we were in session she was absolutely zeroed in on me with her eyes, her attention. It wasn’t scary or hokey- but it was a little unsettling because sometimes it seemed she could ‘see me’ before I was ready to reveal myself. I’ve never had a more attuned, ‘in-the-room’ therapist.

I also relate with the last few sentences of your passage. The sorrow I felt was like ‘finding my real mother’ but ‘not allowed in’ her life, her house, her family.

I’m probably not describing it right.

You’re describing it right, I completely get the feeling behind what you wrote. It’s exactly that...feeling like you found your father/mother only not being allowed full access to them. Very similar to a feeling of finding your father after the end of childhood, when, in a way, he can’t really be a father, not in the way you need him to.

I relate to this quite a bit.

It’s beautiful, yet also tragic and heartbreaking.

Long after I’ve been out of therapy, I think of how my therapist looked at me at certain moments and weep with childhood longing.

I can relate to this, particularly regarding my former marriage counselor. He had a very intense gaze and it felt like he was seeing me on a different level than most anyone ever had. I experience it on occasion with current T, as well, though he tends to make me feel "seen" in other ways.

I personally did not experience this in a way that related to longing for a parent, but isn't it also how people very often fall in love with a new partner, or prospective partner? A strong sense that there is something almost mystical and magical in the encounter and in that person. Finding a soul mate as they say. My version, when I still sometimes tend to feel a mild form of that sort of excitement and kinda child-like longing and enthusiasm, is when I meet someone new that I sense (or imagine) highly similar to myself and we have great sync, think alike, do things in similar ways. I have experienced this with people I don't know how many times since my early childhood and it has lost from the intensity a great deal with so many repetitions, but just never seems to get old completely.

When thinking about something that feels more like parent-child, what comes to me easily is my mentor-mentee experiences. As I got older, I've learned that I can also experience it from the opposite end, with someone that I am mentoring, when it feels and functions like a natural great fit. Just had one of them a few weeks ago with a student. After a short while, that sense of similarity hit hard both of us and working together became quite intoxicating (in a good way). Also very efficient. I tried to remain as professional as possible and would not respond to his more personal reactions, but I saw in him many instances that felt like that metaphor in the OP, he also sometimes could not control it and overreacted a bit publicly. But it was not merely in his imagination, it was a response to something very real and mutual. I was actually a bit uneasy with myself when he left (was an intern), how much I missed him and kinda craved his presence for a couple weeks, almost like craving a drug. I have not experienced similar from the other end for a good while, in relation to a mentor of mine (or a therapist), but had many many times when I was young. I also got into quite a few "inappropriate" relationships driven by that instinct, desire, love - call it whatever. Often got very good and meaningful experiences out of it but not only that, sometimes it can be very painful with the limitations of reality and morality. My experiences never truly feel hierarchical or parent-child-like though, for me it does not have feelings of loss or longing for something I've never had, much more like equals even when there are large age or other kinds of gaps. Kohut's Twinship concept is what describes it best for me, it is something I intensely relate to and am prone to. I've found and experienced it so many times in so many forms and still works. I guess it is because it's just the kind of interpersonal experience I like the best, never gets enough I would say most of them fulfills the desire in their own way but the limits of reality or human decency also usually restricts them - perhaps that's why it comes back again and again.

I took a class from her husband before she published this. I read it when it first came out, and wondered how affected the whole family. I admire the bravery.

Oh my goodness yes I can relate to this. A lot. More than I wish I did. Because of childhood neglect, T’s loving gaze feels like a drug. I feel pathetic about it because I’m a grownup.

Thank you for sharing.

Yes, I relate as well. It takes me back to my first therapist who I saw when I was 18. She would often look at me when I'm incredibly intense, caring and utterly beautiful expression on her face. It definitely felt like a drug. I find it extremely hard to look at my current t because it feels too intimate (a bit of erotic transference going on as well) so I havent yet experienced her gaze. Her voice is beautiful though, very caring. .