ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the notion that there remains a taboo on radical confrontations, which psychoanalysis also intrinsically intends to confront. So, in each psychoanalysis there ought to be an intense clash between, on one hand, the anxiety-laden pressure to maintain the socially structuring taboo on a full confrontation with human sexuality and, on the other hand, the pressure to offer each patient the opportunity for such a full, radical confrontation. S. Freud succumbed to the powerful taboo against fully pulling the curtain back on sexual excitement when he undermined his own brilliant uncoupling of the sexual drive from any specific aim or object. Sexual excitement was, for Freud, at least as powerful as any affect in determining the formation of object representations. Even in the USA, however, manifestations of a continued taboo on fully unmasking the clandestine workings of sexuality intrapsychically and in the transference–countertransference situation have led to essays calling for a correction.
