ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book provides a review of the psychoanalytic literature on the erotic transference. It attempts to place the psychotherapist’s own erotic experience into the therapeutic process. The book focuses on the variety of erotic countertransference that a therapist may experience. This is considered particularly from the point of view of relating to the stage of development of the patient. The book deals with the homoerotic transference and countertransference. The homoerotic seems to cause the greatest anxieties to patient and analyst alike. The book presents the origins of the individual’s erotic experience in the infant’s relationship with the mother. It looks at the effects of perversions on the transference and counter-transference. Perverse states of mind are described as potentially highly destructive on the transference and countertransference matrix where the therapeutic dyad can degenerate into a perverse couple.
