ABSTRACT
In a classic psychoanalytic textbook the North American psychoanalyst
Ralph Greenson wrote in 1967 that ‘all cases of eroticised transference I
have heard of have been women patients analysed by men’ (Greenson
1967: 339). The image of the female patient who falls passionately in love
with her male analyst has also become a popular media stereotype. During
the 1980s there was intense debate in the International Journal of PsychoAnalysis about why this kind of highly eroticised transference has been reported less often between female analysts and male patients.
