THE mother is with child, and we are told to rejoice, and again,
rejoice; for one is promised who will be called "wonderful", and
will be third in line to the throne.
Politicians fell over themselves to be "more pleased than thou"
at the announcement that the Duchess of Cambridge was pregnant, and
we were all told that the nation was rejoicing - but not the bit of
it that I was sitting with.
My friend had just returned from Afghanistan, and he was furious
at the wall-to-wall coverage. "This is why I don't feel comfortable
in the West," he said. "It feels more real in Afghanistan. There
was a bomb in Jalalabad yesterday. Why isn't the news covering
that?"
But one man's discomfort became a global fury after 2Day FM
radio set in motion the fickle law of unintended consequences.
Prank phone-calls made to the King Edward VII hospital meant that a
nurse, Jacintha Saldanha, took the call. She was not talking to the
royal family as she imagined, but to a giggling commercial radio
station in Australia. Tragically, it seems that it was a
humiliation she was unable to cope with, and, as news of her death
criss-crossed the world, there was a maelstrom of condolence,
confusion, and rage.
Kate and Wills, as they are affectionately known, are not to
blame for any of this. One of the reasons for the extraordinary
interest in their child is simply their popularity. In national
polls, they are the most popular royals, and therefore
lightning-rods for the nation's transference - yes, it is time we
talked about that.
Transference is a process first described by Freud, whereby
attitudes, feelings, and desires of very early significant
relationships are transferred, unconsciously, on to the counsellor;
but its reach stretches way beyond the therapy room. When Diana,
Princess of Wales, died, the outpouring of grief was believed by
many to be a transference of sadness on to Diana which people did
not allow or acknowledge in themselves.
In like manner, other people can sometimes draw happiness from
us, vicarious happiness, in which we are happy on their behalf:
"I'm so happy for you, even if I can't experience it myself."
Transference is not dangerous, once people are conscious of it;
and, in the hands of a good therapist, can be used to help people
re-engage with denied feelings in themselves.
Kate and Wills are an ordinary couple who are not an ordinary
couple, and, to that extent, rather like Mary and Joseph, who,
along with their baby, were also under a pressure they did not
create for themselves. "The hopes and fears of all the years Are
met in thee tonight," wrote the Revd Phillips Brooks, of
Philadelphia, after a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Now that's what
I call transference.