ABSTRACT
As psychotherapy offers an opportunity for the reworking of parent-child dependency issues, it follows that its erotic components will carry the illicit quality characteristic of incestuous feelings. The therapist’s preoccupations may inadvertently denote the narcissistic elements that are easily brought into play by erotic transference and its vicissitudes in the countertransference. This chapter points to the relative scarcity of writing on the erotic transference. It encompasses the two areas of life that Freud designated as being crucial—love and work. The chapter presents clinical material that illustrates a defensive configuration, where the patient appeared to have lost all interest in the original aim of therapy and overwhelmed the sessions with her erotic concerns.
