Homoerotic Countertransference The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name?

Despite the recent interest in erotic countertransference and self-disclosure, little has been written about these phenomena when both analyst and patient are the same gender. Since homoerotic feelings can surface in any treatment, regardless of the participants' sexual orientation, this may well be a phobic avoidance that restricts many treatments, as well as our profession. I propose that the analyst's awareness of homoerotic feelings in the countertransference—including struggling with ways to express them—ultimately can create an atmosphere of safety. I offer an extended case example of one man with whom I colluded to ignore frightening aspects of his sexual fantasies. It was only by using my erotic countertransference, especially at a charged and pivotal moment, that I was able to help the patient begin to integrate split-off aspects of his sexuality.     

Braving the erotic field in the treatment of adolescents*

Abstract

The psychoanalytic literature on erotic transference and countertransference in adolescence is notably sparse, despite the centrality of the developing sexual body/mind. Erotic feelings in the consulting room with an adolescent can feel taboo, causing the analyst to avoid the immediacy of these feelings. Excessive timidity on the part of the analyst can limit the growth of the capacity for containment of sexual feelings and yield what I term ‘erotic insufficiency’ in our work with adolescents. I offer clinical material from a period of erotic transference and countertransference with a 12-year-old boy to consider these ideas. Further, I suggest that the very terms ‘erotic transference’ and ‘erotic countertransference’ can feel defensively remote and antiseptic. I suggest that ‘erotic field’ better captures the subtle, nuanced interplay of feelings.     

Erotic Countertransference and Clinical Social Work Practice: A National Survey of Psychotherapists' Sexual Feelings,Attitudes, and Responses

Male and female social work psychotherapists were surveyed on sexual feelings toward clients, sexual behavior with clients, and utilization of erotic countertransference. Relationships between these variables and therapists' self-reports of training in erotic counter-transference, utilization of supervisory consultation, length of clinical experience, and theoretical orientation were also examined. Male therapists were significantly more likely than females to report sexual attraction toward clients, and to report using erotic countertransference to further treatment goals. The frequency of therapists' discussion of sexual feelings toward clients in supervision was related to the reported frequency of utilization of sexual feelings in treatment. The majority of therapists reported that their social work training did not prepare them adequately to work with erotic countertransference.     

A Picture Book of Internal Events: The Colours of Rage and Love

The views on countertransference in psychoanalytic theory and practice have undergone a change within the last fifty years. From being considered an impediment to analysis, countertransference is today looked upon as an important potential for a tentative understanding of what is unconsciously communicated from the analysand to the analyst. This implies that the analyst is susceptible to the unconscious interaction in the transference and the countertransference, and that he/she becomes conscious as quickly as possible of what is taking place. This applies especially to erotic feelings which are often intensified in analyses with patients with a serious psychopathology, as well as in analyses with patients in regressive phases where projective identification is the dominant factor used as a defence and a communication. Opinions differ as regards the question of how to deal with such a situation, especially whether it is right to be candid about the analyst's countertransference feelings towards the analysand, something most would caution against. In an example from an analysis, the analyst describes how he was influenced by an unconscious erotic countertransference. After three years of therapy with a patient with a serious psychopathology, he developed ?motherly” feelings, which he interpreted as reflecting a child's longing for closeness and physical contact. The result was that a few times, he ?forgot” to indicate the end of the session, which was then prolonged, and also that he embraced her on several occasions before she left the session. One year later, he had intense sexual fantasies and dreams about the analysand, which he experienced as both enticing and alarming, and as an impediment to the analysis. He soon became aware of the element of projective identification in the interaction, and by interpreting the analysand's unconscious communication, he regained his ability to maintain an analytic attitude and clear boundaries.     

Private Terrors Sexualized Aggression and a Psychoanalyst's Fear of Her Patient

This clinical paper explores the meanings and evolution of an analyst's reaction of fear in relation to her patient's sexualized aggression. From both an intrapsychic and an intersubjective perspective, the author analyzes the coconstruction of this transference—countertransference phenomenon. Case vignettes illustrate the author's attempts to address her patient's sexualized aggression while struggling to free herself from the feelings of intimidation and fearfulness stirred by his sadomasochistic fantasies and patterns of interaction. The analyst's unconscious identification with the patient's disowned femininity and narcissistic vulnerability is seen as central to this countertransference “stranglehold.” Release from the analyst's masochistic position comes through a shift in her own affective participation. The importance of the analyst's recognizing her own unconscious contributions to this sadomasochistic dynamic is emphasized and elaborated. Discussion also focuses on the relevance of gender to the issue of countertransference fear, as illustrated in this particular male patient—female analyst dyad.     

THE COUNTERTRANSFERENCE: EROTIC,EROTISED AND PERVERSE3

The author begins by drawing attention to the dearth of psychoanalytic theory on the sexual countertransference, which he attributes largely to embarrassment associated with the personal superego and to fear of censure by the psychoanalytic community. After a review of the relevant literature, he points out that the term ‘countertransference’ arose in the context of misbehaviour by the early analysts and that the countertransference was originally seen as something to be controlled and suppressed, partly for the sake of the reputation of psychoanalysis. Theoretical and normative reasons are adduced for the disappearance of sexuality from psychoanalytic scenarios, and the wish for sexual contact with patients is discussed. While it may be deemed perfectly normal for an analyst to have erotic feelings towards patients of either sex, psychopathology is, in the author's view, involved only if he acts out. Clinical illustrations are given of manifestations of the sexual countertransference in its erotic, erotised and perverse forms, which the author considers it important to distinguish. He concludes that the relative absence of theory on the subject means that not enough clinical use is made of the sexual countertransference, which he sees as of great potential value to therapist and patient alike.     

Academic Course Combining Psychological Skills Training and Life Skills Education for University Students and Student-Athletes

In Part II, we present two case studies of erotic transference and countertransference in sport psychology service delivery. We interviewed two seasoned practitioners, both with long histories of working with athletes. These sport psychologists represent two extremes of the spectrum when encountering the erotic in service delivery. One participant's story is about denial, suppression, and repression of anything that hints of the erotic in practitioner-client relationships. The other sport psychologist's story is about a nearly unbridled reveling in the erotic with a client. The practitioners are easy to condemn, one for ignorance and lack of awareness of self and others, the other for adolescent fantasies and objectification of his client. But those responses are facile and uncharitable. We present these two cases as examples, albeit extreme ones, of how truly complex the erotic is in service delivery. Their stories illustrate, in sometimes painful and graphic ways, what it is to be human, all-too-human, in our encounters with the people we serve.     

On Some Advantages of Mutual Sexual Fantasy in the Analytic Situation: Commentary on Paper by Christopher Bonovitz

This commentary reflects a fundamental agreement with Christopher Bonovitz' main thesis—fantasy, indeed, cannot be seen as a product of an isolated mind and is intrinsic to the development of both optimal internal and interpersonal richness. The theme of mutual sexual fantasy between analyst and patient in particular is highlighted for discussion. It is argued that, contrary to the more discussed dangers of erotic countertransference feelings, the absence of analysts' reciprocal sexual fantasy has the potential to deaden the analytic relationship and result in a less than satisfactory analytic experience.     

Erotic Transference and Its Relationship to Childhood Seduction

The phenomenon of an erotic transference has long been a difficult, if not mysterious, process within clinical psychoanalysis. Traditionally, the development of an erotic transference has been viewed as a negative clinical event fueled by the analyst's countertransference reaction. A much neglected dimension, the relationship between childhood seduction and the development of an erotic transference, will be introduced and examined. In three clinical cases our data suggest that actual sexual abuse in childhood is a causal factor in the manifestation of an erotic transference in the clinical interaction of an analysis.     

The many faces of self-harm

This paper explores why open dialogue on the subject of erotic transference and countertransference is so difficult and attempts to offer an understanding of these phenomena which might enable counsellors to work more confidently with it. It also briefly examines the author's own research on therapists' thoughts and experiences of erotic transference, seeking to differentiate between inappropriate sexual contact between clients and therapists and the experience of erotic transference in the context of therapy as a reworking of the Oedipal relationship. Case examples illustrating the experience of countertransference within the therapeutic situation and how its presence can act as a help or a hindrance are offered. The paper concludes by examining the need to reflect on the erotic transference in therapeutic work and proposes its usefulness as a therapeutic tool. Suggestions about how the erotic transference can be managed to therapeutic effect are also explored.     

“There Was a Child Went Forth” Commentary on Paper by Steven Stern

In this discussion of Stern's rich and thoughtful contribution to the dialogue between unified- and multiple-self theories, I refer to his earlier conceptualization of repeated and needed relationships. I thus highlight how his current model strikes me as shifting his emphasis toward identificatory factors, both in development and in clinical process, and away from the working through, or negotiation of, repetitions of relational configurations. Through Stern's clinical examples, I engage dialogue about how his construct of an “intersubjective self” relates to the qualities of multiplicity he accounts for in his theory. And I consider the implications for clinical technique of favoring identificatory influences over the analyst's living through the experience of transference repetitions with the patient and thereby introducing ameliorating responses from within, rather than from a stance more external to, embeddedness in transference–countertransference repetitions.     

The Primary Maternal Oedipal Situation and Female Homoerotic Desire

In this paper, I closely examine classical psychoanalytic theory on the female oedipal complex in order to shed light on same-sex object choice. Given that the mother is the first love object for the girl as well as for the boy, the girl's object relational constellation centrally involves the experience of homoeroticism as well as heteroeroticism. Yet, it remains a question as to whether a mother can see her daughter as a sexual subject; can mother–daughter homoerotic desire be experienced and validated by the mother? That a girl desires her mother is generally not seen or registered by the mother; it remains an unrecognized desire.

I suggest that the obscuring of female desire has to do centrally with the fate of eroticism in the early mother–daughter relationship. I propose relabeling the “negative oedipal complex” in girls as “the primary maternal oedipal situation.” Issues involving invisibility or stigmatization of one's erotic desire likely pose a significant challenge to the self–esteem of many lesbians. It is important in clinical work with lesbian patients to be open to a complex interweaving of developmental experiences, varying with each individual, some of which may have been damaging to, and others strengthening of, female sexuality.     

The Content of Emotional Thoughts

Abstract

In this paper I examine Peter Goldie's theory of emotional thoughts and feelings, offered in his recent book The Emotions and subsequent articles. Goldie argues that emotional thoughts cannot be assimilated to belief or judgment, together with some added-on phenomenological component, and on this point I agree with him. However, he also argues that emotionally-laden thoughts, thoughts had, as he puts it, ‘with feeling,’ in part differ from unemotional thoughts in their content. The thought ‘the gorilla is dangerous’ when thought with an emotional feeling of fear differs in its content from the thought ‘the gorilla is dangerous’ when thought without actually feeling fear. I argue that Goldie offers no good reason to think that the difference between emotional and unemotional thoughts is found in their contents. In fact, the analogies Goldie presents to help make his case actually suggest that the contribution feelings make to the distinctive role played by emotional thoughts consists solely in their influencing the way we think emotional thoughts. However, this position is consistent with Goldie's broader point: that theories which treat emotional feelings as phenomenological afterthoughts should be rejected.     

Commentary on ‘The arms of the chimeras’ by Béatrice Ithier

In this Commentary I will first of all summarise my understanding of the proposal set out by Béatrice Ithier concerning her concept of the ‘chimera’. The main part of my essay will focus on Ithier's claim that her concept of the chimera could be described as a ‘mental squiggle’ because it corresponds to Winnicott's work illustrated in his book ‘Therapeutic Consultations’ (1971). At the core of Ithier's chimera is the notion of a traumatic link between analyst and patient, which is the reason she enlists the work of Winnicott. I will argue, however, that Ithier's claim is based on a misperception of the theory that underpins Winnicott's therapeutic consultations because, different from Ithier's clinical examples of work with traumatised patients, Winnicott is careful to select cases who are from an ‘average expectable environment’ i.e. a good enough family. Moreover, Winnicott does not refer to any traumatic affinity with his patients, or to experiencing a quasi‐hallucinatory state of mind during the course of the consultations. These aspects are not incorporated into his theory. In contrast (to the concept Ithier attempts to advance), Winnicott's squiggle game constitutes an application of psychoanalysis intended as a diagnostic consultation. In that sense Winnicott's therapeutic consultations are comparable with the ordinary everyday work between analyst and analysand in a psychoanalytic treatment. My Commentary concludes with a question concerning the distinction between the ordinary countertransference in working with patients who are thinking symbolically in contrast to an extraordinary countertransference that I suggest is more likely to arise with patients who are traumatised and thus functioning at a borderline or psychotic level.     

Phenomenological Reduction,Epochē, and the Speech of Socrates in the Symposium

The point of the present article is to investigate whether the key conceptions of epochē and reduction as found in Husserl's phenomenology can be brought to bear in a fruitful rereading of the speech of Socrates in Plato's Symposium.¹ In pursuit of this goal, I will begin by revisiting the traditional reading of this speech in terms of a scala amoris in which the erotic subject is guided from attachment to a series of inferior objects to the Beautiful and Good itself such that the value of all preceding attachments is suspended. The critique that this approach to love instrumentalizes all but the transcendent Good is one that is found both within and without the text. In opposition to this reading, however, I will suggest that Husserl's notions of epochē and reduction enable us to read the speech not as an instrumentalizing scala but in terms of a reflective distance in which our immersion in and with the erotic object is suspended so that we might reappropriate the real meaning of erotic engagement. According to this reading, Plato does not negate the particular or lower forms of eros but reinscribes them with a value derived from their position in relation to the ultimate. The suspension of the lower forms, then, is not final but is merely employed in order to let what occurs in erotic engagement show itself.     

Avoiding unbearable pain

This presentation describes the way in which defence mechanisms and resistance manifested themselves in the analysis of a man with a narcissistic personality disorder. In the course of the analysis, there were changes in the forms taken by the defence and the resistance, signalling important genetic and dynamic conditions in his life. Both represented desperate attempts to avoid the unbearably painful feelings and affects which he had experienced in his childhood, and bore witness to early and primitive defence mechanisms such as denial, splitting and projective identification. The defence can also be seen as an expression of an unconscious fear of being re-traumatised. The idealisation of the analyst in the first years of the analysis can therefore be understood as a precondition for entering into this kind of process. It also represented a defence against aggressive and homosexual feelings in the transference which first became clear during the final phase of the analysis and could then be worked through. At this point, the analyst's reactions to his own unconscious countertransference were of help in understanding what was actually going on. This analysis may also suggest that defects and trauma in the earliest years may be conducive to alexithymia, deficient contact between feelings and words, linked to the risk of developing serious psychosomatic illnesses. This may be a consequence of the fact that the child's feelings and affects were neither accepted, understood nor affirmed in words, or they may even have been met with rejection or ridicule. A connection between narcissistic personality disorders and alexithymia can possibly be seen here.     

Countertransference: Our new royal road to the unconscious?

In this paper I am tracing the history of countertransference and how it has informed the current debate about self‐disclosure as a pivotal instrument of analytic work. Now that the analyst's “subjective factor”; has been understood as a central influence on the analysand and as a vital source of information about the analysand's intrapsychic life, I argue that certain currents in the relational school of psychoanalysis confuse the analyst's subjectivity with his personality. While becoming more “real”; with a patient may enliven a stale analytic dialogue, it ought not be confused with, or take the place of, an analysis of unconscious desires and phantasies. I claim that a two‐person psychology can exist only within a tripartite structure in which the analyst does not lose sight of his complex function of being the carrier, observer, and conveyor of the unconscious currents holding both participants in check.     

In sickness and in health: An exploration of some of the unconscious processes involved in the decision by family caregivers to place a family member with dementia in residential care

This paper explores the feelings, conscious and unconscious, evoked by the difficult decision to place a family member with dementia into residential care. In an exploratory study I interviewed five people who had made this decision with a view to exploring some of the unconscious processes involved in their decision-making. The interviews were interpreted paying attention to my understanding of the transference and my countertransference feelings and as triangulated by a psychodynamic supervision group.

Intimate contact with ageing and death evokes fears about mortality and activates primitive anxieties. The progress of dementia may amplify primitive or psychotic states of functioning, particularly those involving evacuatory projection, and family carers may resort to splitting off unbearable feelings of anxiety which such projections can evoke and may contribute to their decision to look for residential care.

Once placed in residential care different dynamics evolve and further difficult questions arise: how often to visit; whether and when to dispose of the person's possessions and ultimately how to grieve. The focus of this paper is, as far as it is possible, on the partner without dementia as an individual and the impact of their relative's dementia on their lives.     

Working with Adopted Clients

When working with clients who have been adopted, therapists must be alert to the fact that lack of information about the birth mother and feelings of rejection can lead their patients to use defense mechanisms and create fantasies that will affect the transference and countertransference. Using examples from both agency and private practice, this article helps the clinician understand how adoption has affected their client's lives both in and out of the therapy room and suggests ways to modify treatment with a greater sensitivity to adoption issues.     

The Analyst and the Significant Other: Two's Company,Three's a Crowd: Commentary on Paper by Carla Leone

My response to Carla Leone's paper focuses on how psychoanalysts perceive the significant others of their patients is an attempt to both endorse raising this important question and to augment our thinking about it. Leone identifies the dynamic backdrop for the tendency of individual therapists to unquestionably accept their patient's representation of the significant other. From an interpersonal-relational and family systemic perspective, I raise other dynamic possibilities regarding transference and countertransference, the self as co-constructed with the significant other, introduce the importance of attachment theory, and suggest creative ways to keep a balanced view of the partner who is not known to the analyst except through the patient's representation.