ABSTRACT
One of the issues that has defined psychoanalysis, historically and through its cultural representation in the arts, is the erotic transference. This is often portrayed as a situation where the patient, most often female, falls in love with the therapist, most often older and male. The orthodox psychoanalytic interpretation of such erotic entanglement focuses on unresolved issues from a relationship with a parent which get transferred onto the therapeutic relationship, and which can affect both parties. The more recent relational movement in psychoanalysis has recognised a greater complexity in the emergence of erotic feelings in the therapeutic relationship, often related to early attachment and loss. It also recognises that the therapeutic relationship is real, and complex feelings can emerge, like in any other relationship. The short stories in this and the following part focus on the therapist’s private and subjective experience of the therapeutic relationship. Here, questions are posed about the nature of erotic subjectivity, and to what extent it has to be linked with one’s gendered identity and sexual orientation or whether it corresponds to a more embodied experience of oneself and the other.
