Gender, Countertransference and the Erotic Transference: Perspectives from Analytical Psychology and Psychoanalysis »

How do gender and sexual difference influence the erotic transference?

Gender, Countertransference and the Erotic Transference offers new insights into working with complex transference and countertransference phenomena. Including views from a wide spectrum of theoretical backgrounds, it makes a unique contribution to discourse on the themes of gender, sexuality and the erotic transference.

The contributors are highly experienced clinicians with international reputations as theorists in the fields of analytical psychology, psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Illustrated with closely observed clinical examples and detailed theoretical discussion, innovations in technique are introduced on themes including developmental mourning, female perversion, the meaning and purpose of the erotic transference, the dying patient, lesbian homoerotic transference and supervision of the erotic transference. Countertransference is vividly explored in chapters on sexual difference, the therapist’s body and the challenging topic of perversion in the analyst. The book is divided into four sections:

• gender and the erotic transference


• the erotic transference and the symbolic function


• women working with women


• historical perspectives on women working with men.

Gender, Countertransference and the Erotic Transference extends existing theory, highlighting the symbolic nature of the transference/countertransference dynamic. It will be compelling reading for experienced clinicians, students and trainees in the fields of psychoanalysis, analytical psychology and psychoanalytic psychotherapy, as well as counselling, the arts therapies and social work.

Acknowledgements     vii
List of contributors     ix
Introduction   Joy Schaverien     1
Gender and the erotic transference     13
Men who leave too soon: Reflections on the erotic transference and countertransference   Joy Schaverien     15
Individuation at the end of life: A study of erotic transference and countertransference   Joy Schaverien     32
Supervising the erotic transference and countertransference   Joy Schaverien     56
Erotic transferences and the symbolic function     71
Paying homage to the power of love: Exceeding the bounds of professional practice   Anne Springer     73
Purposive aspects of the erotic transference   Coline Covington     90
Mourning and erotic transference   Susan Kavaler-Adler     104
Who speaks? Who listens? Different voices and different sexualities   Mary Lynne Ellis     123
Women working with women     143
Women in search of women: Clinical issues that underlie a woman's search for a female therapist   Sherly Williams     145
Lesbian homoerotic transference in dialectic with developmental mourning: On the way to symbolism from the protosymbolic   Susan Kavaler-Adler     157
Femaleperversion: Scenes and strategies in analysis and culture   Anne Springer     184
What can we learn from the therapist's body?   Susie Orbach     198
Historical perspectives on women working with men     211
Sexual issues in the transference and countertransference between female therapist and male patient   Herta A. Guttman     213
Gender and transference: The screen of the phallic mother   Nancy Mann Kulish     223
The analysis of a male patient by a female analyst: The problem of the negative Oedipal transference   Laila Karme     240
On transference manifestations in male patients with female analysts   Marianne Goldberger   Dorothy Evans Holmes     252
Index     273