The ‘frame’ as a container for the erotic transference – A case study

Abstract

This paper discusses various aspects of the psychotherapeutic frame, and explores the importance of maintaining the boundaries of the frame especially when an erotic transferential relationship is present. Many now agree that erotic transference and counter-transference occur in most therapeutic relationships, and yet it is something that therapists often struggle to work with effectively. The author acknowledges her own difficulties in working with erotic transferences and demonstrates why the adherence to the frame is especially significant in these circumstances. A case study is used to illustrate the difficulties of working with the erotic transference within the constructs of a frame and short-term therapy, and how the author's own counter-transference affected the therapy as well as how this was dealt with in supervision.     

The analyst and analysand as citizens in the world

Beginning with Jung's reflections on individuation as a starting point, this article examines the analytic relationship in the context of our current reality. The latter exerts pressures of all sorts that do not favour individuation. Indeed, geopolitical commentators see present‐day society as marked globally by excessive self‐love that seeks to dominate, at the expense of the other. Given that such forms of dominance are now also very prevalent in the workplace, this article examines how to help the increasing number of individuals with highly successful professional careers who suffer from this pressure and who then seek analysis. ‘Progressive movement’, an indicator of and incentive to change, is examined by studying the narrative processes emerging from dream activity ‐ including dreaming with the hands in the sand tray ‐ in the co‐transference. The article highlights how ‘progressive movement’, founded on narrative Competence and on the reflective function, may generate experiences of ‘realistic hope’. The latter signals the start of an individuation process in the analytic couple and, simultaneously, the transformation of both the analyst and the analysand into good enough ‘citizens in the world’.     

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.     

Transference symptom

Transference symptom is a hazy notion in Freud's writings. The notion is presented here as a particular moment in the crystallization of the transference neurosis. It results from a double cathexis of the analytic frame and the analyst resulting in a symbolic distortion that is represented plastically within the session, as occurs in dreams. The transference symptom proceeds from two different preconscious cathexes, one attached to the reality of the frame, the other to the drive linked to the analyst. A psychic space is thereby opened up for interpreting both the resistance and the unconscious derivatives of infantile conflict. The transference symptom is a compromise formation that includes the analyst and questions the countertransference stance. Three different analytic situations give rise to transference symptoms according to the relative balance between frame and process in the analytic encounter. The concept is compared with enactment.     

The analyst's awkward gift: balancing recognition of sexuality with parental protectiveness

The author describes the many roles that the analyst is called upon to fulfill in the transference during the course of an analysis. The loving transference is distinguished from the erotic transference and the erotized transference. Repetition is discussed, as is narcissism, especially in the light of clinical situations in which oedipal issues take center stage. Four brief clinical examples are presented.     

The threat of male-to-female erotic transference

Vignettes from an ongoing psychoanalysis with a patient, Michael, are presented to illustrate the various dimensions of the erotic transference at different phases of the treatment. The relation to power, the experience and expression of aggression, how these may be organized by gender, and the female analyst's countertransference are discussed as potentially fostering or inhibitory in the development of an erotic transference. Traditional sociocultural gender stereotypes kept alive in fantasy can cause female analysts to subtly foreclose the impending threat of an intense erotic transference with male analysands due to a fear of outwardly directed male aggression. It is suggested that the maternal/containing transference can be unconsciously fostered by both analyst and analysand to defensively avoid expression of the aggressivized erotic transference in its full intensity. Similarities and differences in cases of sexual boundary violations with opposite-gender pairings are discussed.     

Desire and the female analyst

The literature on erotic transference and countertransference between female analyst and male patient is reviewed and discussed. It is known that female analysts are less likely than their male colleagues to act out sexually with their patients. It has been claimed that a) male patients do not experience sustained erotic transferences, and b) female analysts do not experience erotic countertransferences with female or male patients. These views are challenged and it is argued that, if there is less sexual acting out by female analysts, it is not because of an absence of eros in the therapeutic relationship. The literature review covers material drawn from psychoanalysis, feminist psychotherapy, Jungian analysis, as well as some sociological and cultural sources. It is organized under the following headings: the gender of the analyst, sexual acting out, erotic transference, maternal and paternal transference, gender and power, counter-transference, incest taboo - mothers and sons and sexual themes in the transference.     

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.     

Can I Touch You Through A Screen? A Discussion of “Video Communication and Transgenerational Shame in the Mother/Daughter Bond”

This discussion elaborates on the complexity that electronically mediated treatment adds to Psychoanalytic work. The author explores the fate of the body in a Skype relationship, with particular attention to dilemmas posed by work with erotic transference when the transgressive excitement of possibility – actual erotic contact between analyst and patient – is absent. Additionally using Goldberg’s understanding of the frame as contact barrier, the author considers Skype as both frame and process and elaborates on limitations posed by Skype in adjusting to the phenomenology of the clinical moment. Ways to vitalize the frame over Skype are suggested. The author’s concerns about Skype treatment with dissociated and traumatized patients are also explored, and unrecognized enactments in Ringel’s work with D are considered, as is the possibility that work over Skype with D may have reified disconnection rather than promoted is intimacy.     

Working Online During the Contemporary COVID-19 Pandemic1

Within the psychoanalytic school there has been substantial and ongoing debate about the efficacy of teleanalysis. However, as a result of the current COVID-19 pandemic and the online work with which the Jungian analytic community has now had to engage, this paper initially focuses on analysts’ actual experiences of working by teleanalysis. These experiences highlight a range of issues like “Zoom fatigue”, “online disinhibition”, dissonance, confidentiality, the frame and working with new patients. Alongside these issues, there were ample experiences by analysts of both productive psychotherapy apace with analytic work involving transference and countertransference phenomena, all indicating that a genuine and good enough analytic process can occur with teleanalysis. An overview of the research and literature both prior to the pandemic and as a result of it, confirms the validity of these experiences so long as analysts are cognizant of the specifics of such an online modality. Conclusions to do with the question, “what have we learned?”, alongside training, ethics and supervision issues are subsequently discussed.     

Cyberpassion: E-rotic transference on the Internet.

While psychoanalysis has generally been regarded as "the talking cure," written communication from patient to analyst commonly appears within the analytic setting. In our electronic age, e-mail communications from patient to analyst have become commonplace. This paper describes a case of erotic transference conveyed primarily through e-mail messages, and discusses their multiple meanings as an enactment. The unique features of e-mail communication are explored and contrasted with verbal discourse in the analytic dyad.     

Tradition and originality in the transference: a Coleridgean commentary

Abstract :  Some of S.T. Coleridge's observations about ' the mind's self-experience of itself ' and the nature of faith and trust are discussed in relation to the implicit tensions between 'tradition' (formal structure, received wisdom) and 'originality' (creativity, individuation), especially in the transference. The existential doubts of some analysands may undermine their confidence that their integrity will be fostered by the analytic relationship: so instead the trappings of 'tradition' (e.g. in the case of a trainee the assumption of a professionally endorsed status) may be appropriated as a spurious substitute for 'originality'.
It is argued that an anticipatory 'faith', albeit initially rather cerebral, may be necessary to sustain the analytic endeavour until a more intimate, heartfelt 'trust' can release the potential for individuation. Further consideration is given to the 'analytic attitude' that might best facilitate this process, and to how sensitivity to these dynamics may inform one's reading of the transference.     

Opportunities of online analysis1

The question of whether tele-analysis is an acceptable way of conducting analysis has been discussed since it has become available. Merchant (2016) and others concluded that ‘the essentials of a genuine analytic process are not necessarily precluded’ (p. 1). In this paper, the author goes a step further and examines potential advantages of tele-analysis. There may be benefits for patients with a history of physical or sexual abuse who value the distance. The potential for a ‘safe place’ for work with erotic transference is also examined. In a further section the author is interested in allowing the analyst the freedom to practise in an authentic way, congruent with their personality. Also explored is the concept of the interactive field including the technological medium, which is subject to synchronistic events. Finally, the author gives examples of a deep connection between patient and analyst which came about despite the physical distance.     

Myers‐Briggs typology and Jungian individuation

Myers‐Briggs typology is widely seen as equivalent to and representative of Jungian theory by the users of the Myers‐Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) and similar questionnaires. However, the omission of the transcendent function from the theory, and the use of typological functions as its foundation, has resulted in an inadvertent reframing of the process of individuation. This is despite some attempts to integrate individuation and typology, and reintroduce the transcendent function into Myers‐Briggs theory. This paper examines the differing views of individuation in Myers‐Briggs and Jungian theory, and some of the challenges of reconciling those differences, particularly in the context of normality. It proposes eight principles, drawn mainly from Jungian and classical post‐Jungian work, that show how individuation as a process can be integrated with contemporary Myers‐Briggs typology. These principles show individuation as being a natural process that can be encouraged outside of the analytic process. They make use of a wide range of opposites as well as typological functions, whilst being centred on the transcendent function. Central to the process is the alchemical image of the caduceus and a practical interpretation of the axiom of Maria, both of which Jung used to illustrate the process of individuation.     

'To Paint the Portrait of a Bird': analytic work from the perspective of a 'developmental' Jungian

Jungians who are trained in the so-called 'Developmental School' straddle the two worlds of psychoanalysis and classical Jungian thinking. This is not always an easy position in which to be, but if the tensions can be held it is potentially a rich and creative way of working. In this paper I attempt to explore this position using the poem, 'To Paint the Portrait of a Bird' by Jacques Prévert as a metaphor for the analytic endeavour. From this perspective I hope to illustrate the importance of being able on the one hand to hold and maintain a clear frame for the careful and detailed exploration of the transference within which the more malign aspects of the psyche might be expressed, and, on the other, to allow the alchemical process of mutual transformation that lies outside the conscious understanding of the analytic couple.     

Video Treatment Re-Examined: Enactments,Erotic Transference,and the Third: Reply to Lyons and Williams

This discussion will address clinical, procedural, and theoretical issues raised by Lyons and Williams in response to my paper. I will elaborate on potential enactments, the erotic transference, and the third as related to the case.     

The making of a tragedy: perversion in the perception of truth

A type of wilful blindness can pervert an individual's perception of truth or reality, not because that reality is too much to hold, but because it is distasteful. Undesired. The case of Adam will be used to explore perversion as it twists an analytic process, affecting the transference and countertransference in ways that are difficult to see. Theorists of Freudian, Kleinian, Lacanian, and Jungian traditions are drawn from to explore potential roots to this perverted turn, and the way it can rigidify an individuation process. The anxiety that haunts this case echoes Jung's anxiety as he wondered if the stone saw him or he saw the stone. Object and observer blend when both analyst and patient hide from themselves and one another, knowing the truth of what is being discussed but blind to it.     

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.     

Symposium on Psychoanalytic Training and Education: Editors' Introduction

This paper offers an intimate account of a long-term analytic process and a detailed presentation of one pivotal session to illustrate and explore the issues of love, dissociation, and discipline in a therapeutic relationship. Organized around the concept of impasse, this paper presents a relational perspective on the potential in transference and countertransference love to facilitate or curtail the forward progress of therapeutic work. Love may bring life or impasse to a person in analysis. One key to the dynamics of therapeutic love and impasse is the problem of weak dissociation (Stern, 1997) and the impact of the analyst's noticing, or not noticing, a moment in the onrush of familiar clinical process that is ripe for questioning. A new concept is introduced and elaborated in this paper that relates to the resolution of preoedipal and oedipal transference love: The paradoxical analytic triangle.     

Transference and countertransference issues with sexually abused clients

Abstract

This paper explores some of the therapeutic issues which arise when working with sexually abused clients. It is suggested that both the client and the therapist may at moments take any of the three positions in the Oedipal triangle and that the mother, father and child status are interchangeable in the transference and counter-transference. It is also suggested that the Oedipus myth represents the failure of a family to contain sexual and murderous passions. I describe a Hindu myth which takes a similar triangle of passion but illustrates how containment is possible. It is proposed that this implies we need to re-evaluate the presence of the erotic in therapy in a more positive light. It is further suggested that the sexually abused client needs to experience the containment of passion if a healing process is to occur.