Psychotherapy: an Erotic Relationship: Transference and Countertransference Passions
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
PSYCHOTHERAPY: AN EROTIC RELATIONSHIP Psychotherapy: An Erotic Relationship explores the most intimate elements of the psychoanalytic relationship: the erotic feelings and fantasies that patients and therapists often experience towards one another. David Mann challenges the classical psychoanalytic view that the erotic transference and countertransference are forms of resistance that threaten the therapeutic process, and argues that they are potentially a powerful source of creative transformation. The author proposes that the erotic is seldom absent from the relationship between therapist and patient. Making use of extensive clinical material, theoretical insights and recent research on infants, he suggests that the development of the erotic derives from interactions between parent and child. Similarly, the erotic nature of the unconscious of both the therapist and the patient have an interactive effect on each other and on the therapeutic process. The author shows that, while the erotic always contains elements of past relationships, it also expresses hope for a different outcome in the present and future. In this hope lies the potential for transformation. Individual chapters focus on the function of the erotic within the unconscious; erotic pre-Oedipal and Oedipal material; the importance of homoerotic functions in therapy; sexual intercourse as a metaphor for psychological change; the significance of the primal scene and the difficulties of working with perversions. Psychotherapy: An Erotic Relationship offers psychotherapists and psychoanalysts a deeper understanding of the interaction between the erotic transference and countertransference, and shows how these aspects of therapy can be used to enhance the therapeutic process. David Mann is a practising psychoanalytic psychotherapist. He works in private practice and primary care and is a member of the Association of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapists and the United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapists. He teaches on several psychotherapy training programmes and runs workshops on erotic transference and countertransference throughout the UK and Europe. He has extensively published in leading national and international psychotherapy journals. PSYCHOTHERAPY: AN EROTIC RELATIONSHIP Transference and countertransference passions David Mann HOVE AND NEW YORK First published 1997 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 by Brunner-Routledge 27 Church Road, Hove, East Sussex BN3 2FA 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” Brunner-Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group © 1997 David Mann All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Mann, David, 1954– Psychotherapy, an erotic relationship: transference and countertransference passions/David Mann. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Psychotherapists-Sexual behaviour. 2. Psychotherapy patients-Sexual behaviour. 3. Psychotherapist and patient. I. Title. RC480.8.M36 1997 616.89′14′023–dc20 96–27225 CIP ISBN 0-203-36038-9 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-37294-8 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0-415-14851-0 (hbk) ISBN 0-415-14852-9 (pbk) For Michelle, with whom I learned just how transformational love and the erotic can be, and our son Mark, who was conceived from our love. CONTENTS Acknowledgements vi INTRODUCTION 1 1 THE EROTIC TRANSFERENCE 4 2 OF CUPID’S BLINDFOLD AND ARROWS: EROTIC 27 TRANSFERENCE, REAL OR UNAUTHENTIC? 3 THE PSYCHOTHERAPIST’S EROTIC SUBJECTIVITY 55 4 VARIETIES OF EROTIC COUNTERTRANSFERENCE 67 5 THE HOMOEROTIC TRANSFERENCE- 100 COUNTERTRANSFERENCE MATRIX 6 TRANSFERENCE AS SYMBOLIC SEXUAL INTERCOURSE 119 7 TRANSFERENCE AS SYMBOLIC PRIMAL SCENE 137 8 TRANSFERENCE PERVERSIONS 161 9 THE TEMPTATION OF TRANSGRESSION 179 Notes 195 References 197 Index 209 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, I would like to thank Michelle MacGrath for her help at every stage of writing this book, from discussion of the main ideas right down to correcting my punctuation. Without her this book would have felt an impossible task. The responsibility for the ideas in this book are mine. However, I extend my thanks to three friends and close colleagues whose critical appreciation, encouragement and patience helped shape earlier drafts of these chapters: Gillian Bowden, Brede Carr and Vivian Marshall. Various people made contributions that influenced the development of my ideas in this book. I would like to thank: Eleanore Armstrong-Perlman, Paul Atkinson, Bob Hinshelwood, David Kay, Elizabeth Nicholson, Peter Phillips, Sheila Powell, Andrew Samuels and Chrysoula Worrall. During the last seven months of writing this book, I was fortunate enough to be asked to facilitate a post-qualification seminar group at the Institute of Psychotherapy and Counselling (WPF) on Transference and Countertransference Perspectives’. This put many stimulating ideas in my direction. I would like to thank Celia Harding for the invitation and opportunity to run this group and, particularly, the members of my seminar group for their contributions during the discussions. I received much encouragement and support from the staff at the Crown Dale Medical Centre. In particular, I would like to thank Suzanne Rackham, Sandra Hales and doctors Maria Elliot, Patrick White, Caroline Taylor, Mark Chamley and Colin Gatwood. I also received helpful advice from Routledge, especially from my editor, Edwina Welham, and the three anonymous readers of the early version of this book. I must also acknowledge the influence of my patients, supervisees and participants on my workshops ‘Working with the erotic transference and Countertransference’. I feel a deep sense of gratitude as they have taught me so much. Eight of these chapters were written especially for this book. Chapter 3 is a slightly revised version of an article which first appeared in the British Journal of Psychotherapy (1994a) 10 (3). vii Thanks are due to Jonathan Cape for permission to quote Salman Rushdie on page 138. INTRODUCTION This book is about how the erotic affects the transference and countertransference. This is not an exposition on the nature of the erotic or love. It is, rather, about how the erotic has significance in the analytical relationship between patient and therapist. To summarize this whole book in a single sentence: I consider that the erotic pervades most if not all psychoanalytic encounters and is largely a positive and transformational influence. My understanding of the erotic transference and counter-transference is drawn mostly from my clinical practice and teaching experience. I work primarily with the ideas of the British Object Relations tradition, drawing heavily on the ideas of Winnicott, Fairbairn and Klein. It is, though, a critical appreciation of this tradition. Work with patients made it necessary for me to think afresh about much of the material they presented. This is also true of my teaching. For the last five years, I have been running workshops on ‘Working with the erotic transference and countertransference’ in the UK and Europe. The needs of the participants on these courses required that I think my ideas through; they also produced much interesting material of their own. In addition to my clinical and teaching experience, I also draw on several other sources. Obviously the existing psychoanalytic literature on the erotic transference and countertransference needs to be considered. This is not an onerous task as so little has been written on the subject. It is an aspect of my own personality that I am interested in those areas that do not stimulate general curiosity. I like to ask ‘Why not?’ especially if this relates to a subject like the erotic. As the reader will find, I agree with some authors and not others. I see my own offering as one of standing on the shoulders of those who have gone before me rather than one of discarding the past. This book also makes use of two other sources of information. The first is the recent upsurge in infant observation data that is giving psychoanalysis a much clearer understanding of the infant’s mind. The second is that of mythology. This is a source of interest partly because myths are well-told tales, but mostly because I consider they represent the deep psychological preoccupations of humanity throughout recorded history. In that sense, they help broaden the findings from the clinical setting into wider, more 2 INTRODUCTION significant areas of human experience. Earlier drafts of some chapters also included anthropological evidence for the same purpose, though shortage of space meant this was later deleted. Each chapter is intended to stand on its own, although the book was written with the whole very much in mind. Chapter 1 outlines my main proposals about the erotic transference. It is considered as a transformational opportunity, partly because it deals