The ‘too muchness’ of excitement: Sexuality in light of excess, attachment and affect regulation

Abstract

This paper brings together contemporary thinking about early attachment and affect regulation with our clinical and theoretical understanding of the problems of adult sexuality. In addition to recent theories of affect regulation and attachment, we incorporate Laplanche's idea of 'excess', which was an important transitional concept integrating real experience with fantasy in sexuality. We elaborate the idea of excess-- 'too-muchness' --to illuminate the early overwhelming of the psyche that affects the formation of sexuality. Linked to recent theoretical developments, this idea helps to grasp the relationship between sexual excitement and early affect regulation, showing how excitement becomes dangerous, thus impeding or distorting desire. The 'too-muchness' of excitement recalls the experience of being a stimulated, overwhelmed, unsoothed child and influences later inability to tolerate sexual arousal and the excitement affect. A clinical case illustrates this connection between attachment trauma, anxiety about sexuality, as well as shameful experiences of gender identity as an area of trauma. We emphasize the importance of working through the terrors and desires of the mother-baby relationship as they emerge in the transference-countertransference in order to develop the ability to hold excitement and stimulation without experiencing the too-much as the intolerable. This includes the working-through of ruptures related to overstimulation as well as the delicate balance of attention to fantasy and intersubjective work in the transference.

Too much? Excessive sexual experiences in bisexual women’s life stories

“…With the concept of excess, Butler refers to psychic space that always "exceeds the domain of the conscious subject" (Butler, 1991, 315). However, this conceptualization alone does not explain why some sexual experiences are characterized by "too muchness" and "excess" (Benjamin and Atlas, 2015;Stein, 2008).…”

“…Ruth Stein (2008) suggests that contemporary psychoanalytic thinking is necessary in order to explore the excessive, shame-linked and transgressive aspects of sexuality. Contemporary psychoanalytic thinking about sexuality as excess is strongly influenced by Laplanche (1987, cited by Stein 2008Benjamin and Atlas, 2015), who theorizes it in terms of the early overwhelming of the psyche (Benjamin and Atlas, 2015). The child is overwhelmed by the parent's excess -the parent is older and bigger, and the adult's unconscious messages about sexuality are too much for the child to contain in its psyche.…”

“…In order to get an enriched view of the complex meanings of sexual exploration in women's lives, I will incorporate contemporary psychoanalytic thinking about sexuality as excess into my analysis (Benjamin and Atlas, 2015;Stein, 2008). My aims are to 1) develop a psychosocial understanding of sexual excess so that it encompasses both sexuality-related norms and non-rational, unconscious psychic dimensions, and 2) show that without the concept of excess it is impossible to understand women's sexual experiences in the context of their relational and affective sexual life stories.…”

Clinical applications of Matte Blanco's thinking

“…Bringing the elements of the symmetrical mode into relation with their possible asymmetrical counterparts (see further on the section ‘In the session') and developing multiple narratives (Ferro, ) is just as important as interpreting content or the transference. We will see in the vignettes reported below how, even in cases of negative transference, a Matte Blanchian approach can be chosen to modify the factor of emotional excess (which Benjamin and Atlas () call the “too‐muchness” of excitement waiting for reverie on the part of the mother or of the analyst). Needless to say, although the question of the analyst's participation in constituting the very quality of the transference (Ferro, ) is not discussed here, any more than the notion of field (Baranger and Baranger, ), it is not because I consider them as negligible factors, but because I have to focus on more specific aspects of Matte Blanchian thought.…”

Response to Aron and Atlas: Cooking Up a Storm—Together

“…Not only does this foster the sense of agency, it also fosters the sense that the mental representation and the world can coincide (see Stern, 1985). That is, the experience that the patterns of expectation we have with our caregivers can be relied upon-or acknowledged when they are frustrated or violated--generates the aspect of lawfulness, which I see as crucial to the building of the third, in particular the moral third (see Benjamin, 2004;Benjamin & Atlas, 2015).…”