Experts say follower’s motivations fall into two categories—rational and irrational. The rational ones are conscious and therefore well-known. They have to do with our hopes of gaining money, status, power, or some other intrinsic desires. Many would call this the norm.

Many times, it is the irrational motivations that lie outside the realm of our awareness and, therefore, beyond our ability to control them are what we are seeing now.  For the most part, these motivations arise from the powerful images and emotions in our unconscious that we project onto our relationships with leaders.

After practicing psychoanalysis for a number of years, Freud was puzzled to find that his patients—who were, in a sense, his followers—kept falling in love with him. Although most of his patients were women, the same thing happened with his male patients.

Freud finally realized that his patients’ idealization of him couldn’t be traced to his own personal qualities. Instead, he concluded, people were relating to him as if he were some important persons from their past—sometimes a parent.

Freud called it the dynamic “transference.” Even today, identifying and dissolving transferences are the principal goals of psychoanalysis. But as important as it is, the concept remains little understood outside clinical psychoanalysis.

Jesus says “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny him/her self and follow Me” (Luke 9:23).” His path was one of self-denial and suffering. But to be His effective disciples, we too are invited to put aside selfish desires and pick up spiritual burdens daily serving others first instead of ourselves.