Sexuality and Suffering, Or the Eew! Factor

On Unrequited Love: Mastery, Submission, and Transcendence

“…She tells me that she is the evil red queen in Alice in Wonderland, who is banished and cast out along with the dark knight. Their relationship confirms her view of herself as abject, abased, rejected, and shameful (Dimen, 2005). Alice tells me that "no one would have me except my lover who is ashamed of the terrible things he has done, so we are together."…”

“…At times I am swept up in her despondence and at times I am transfixed and envious of her exciting erotic exploits. Dimen (2005) elaborates on the "affective contagion" that occurs in the transference countertransference dance, as the analyst experiences a powerful countertransference response to the patient's avowed or disavowed sexuality. Frequently, I also experience anger toward Alice's lover for his manipulations and deceit.…”

The Eroticism of the Maternal: So What If Everything Is About the Mother?

“…Both Doi and Wrye recognize that verbal communication is inadequate. Wrye says, ''Where even speech can be erotized yet nevertheless experienced as strangely inadequate, what the patient longs for is contact with the analyst's voluptuous body or with bodily products'' (Wrye and Welles, 1994, p. 63) or, as Dimen (2005) elaborates clinically, with the analyst's embodied affect. Doi would call such longings amae.…”

“…As explained by Doi (1973), an infant, as it seeks its mother, is already separated from its mother in actuality: ''No one says of a newly born child that it is amaeru-ing. A child is not said to amaeru until, in the latter half of the year following its birth, it first begins to become aware of its surroundings and to seek after its mother'' (p. 74).…”

Of Mothers and Other Collective Lovers: Inspired by Kyoko Taniguchi's “The Eroticism of the Maternal: So What If Everything Is About the Mother?”

“…factor (Dimen, 2005) clings to the maternal body and we flee from the embodied mother with a vengeance. Wrye and Welles's (1989) exuberant celebration of maternal desire seems dated by postfeminism and, perhaps, by its own individuating enthusiasm.…”