ABSTRACT
Adult couple relationships offer the chance for powerful early infantile sexual experiences to be reawakened and thereby provide a unique bonding experience sexually. However, a common problem for couples and individuals coming for therapy is loss of sexual desire. The problems that may be specific to same-gender couple relationships, particularly in the area of sexual desire, have generally not been so widely explored in psychoanalysis compared to those of opposite-gender couples. Furthermore, there are noticeable gaps in the literature on the issue of same-gender desire in the transference and countertransference with therapist of either gender (Burch, 1996; Frommer, 1995; Ryan, 1998). Building on earlier ideas about same-gender desire and couple relationships (Hertzmann, 2011,2015,) this chapter aims to examine how it might be possible to use psychoanalytic concepts—specifically the loss of the unconscious oedipal mother—to explore a deeper understanding of the difficulties with conscious and unconscious same-gender sexual desires in psychoanalytic psychotherapy.
