ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the universality of seduction and betrayal and its ubiquity in the analytic setting. It explores how best to work with these “situations of danger” so that patients may be enabled to revisit their Oedipal issues fully within their analyses. The chapter suggests the existence of a post-Oedipal phase of development, where seduction, betrayal, and consequent revenge fantasies are no longer operative or dominant to the same extent. It also suggests that moments of successful seduction, and, thereby, Oedipal triumph, may be an essential part of each and every analysis. Seduction and betrayal are issues that arouse “exquisite human vulnerability” in psychoanalysts most trusting and intimate relationships. Seduction may encompass all types of desire, the negation of which can result in a malignant betrayal. The chapter illustrates a patient may experience his/her analyst as sexually alive and misinterpret this as seduction.
