There Ain't No Cure for Love: The Psychotherapy of an Erotic Transference

Abstract

This case study charts the process of psychotherapy with a young man over a period of about five years and discusses the emergence of erotic feelings in the transference and countertransference.

In Your Absence: Desire and the Impossibility of Intimacy

“…That is, effective analysis rests on the analysand experiencing the relationship with the analyst-as-"thing." This is not to say that the analysand will necessarily experience erotic transference with the analyst (and vice versa), although it is evident that this is far more common than we may be comfortable acknowledging (see, for example, Hargaden, 2001, and the responses her paper evoked). Rather, I am suggesting that the analysand will fruitfully come to regard the analyst as the voice or source of the analysand's own truth and the processes of analytic relating as pointing toward something that promises a greater satisfaction than that afforded by playing games.…”

Viewing Conflict Through a Reconsideration of the Application of Psychodynamic Sexual Theory in Transactional Analysis

“…This is particularly the case with regard to conflict, whether it is intrapsychic, interpersonal, or social. Indeed, despite his later challenge to the overly psychoanalytic attitude, Cornell (2001) maintained a strong link with psychodynamic sexual theory when discussing the work of Hargaden (2001). She described her work with erotic transference, and Cornell ventured his own diagnosis of her client as hysteric.…”

“…Returning to the discussion regarding Hargaden’s (2001) work, an understanding of the client based on sexual theory can help to integrate the approaches suggested by Cornell, Erskine, and Sills. Merging transference—the “need to be met and understood by a calm, competent other that arises from the unresolved infant need to have the other be a soothing and powerful extension of self” (Sills, 2001, p. 23) —can then be seen to have a terrifying erotic shadow component of the vagina dentata (toothed vagina), that is, the destructive component of regressive and merging desire.…”

Why Have Sex?: A Case Study in Character, Perversion, and Free Choice

“…Within more recent volumes of the Transactional Analysis Journal, sex has begun to emerge as a topic of discussion. There was Hargaden's (2001) case study of an erotic transference with three discussant papers (Cornell, 2001;Erskine, 2001;Sills, 2001) followed by a special issue devoted to gay and lesbian sexuality (Cornell & Simerly, 2004). Hargaden's case provided a bold examination of erotic transference and countertransference in her therapeutic work with Noel, which repeatedly brought her up her own beliefs and limits.…”