Description
Book SynopsisPsychotherapy: An Erotic Relationship challenges the traditional belief that transference and countertransference are merely forms of resistance that jeopardize the therapeutic process. David Mann shows how the erotic feelings and fantasies experienced by clients and therapists can be used to bring about a positive transformation.
Combining extensive and lively clinical examples with theoretical insights and new research on infants, David Mann suggests that the development of the erotic derives from interactions between the parent and child and is seldom absent from the therapist-patient relationship. However, while the erotic always contains elements of past relationships, it also expresses hope for a different outcome in the present and future. Individual chapters explore the function of the erotic within the unconscious: erotic pre-Oedipal and Oedipal material; homoeroticism in therapy; sexual intercourse as a metaphor for psychological change; the primal scen
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements for the 2021 Classic Edition; Psychotherapy: An Erotic Relationship - A 'Slight Return'; Introduction; 1. The Erotic Transference; 2. Of Cupid's Blindfold and Arrows: Erotic Transference, Real or Inauthentic?; 3. The Psychotherapist's Erotic Subjectivity; 4. Varieties of Erotic Countertransference; 5. The Homoerotic Transference-Countertransference Matrix; 6. Transference as Symbolic Sexual Intercourse; 7. Transference as Symbolic Primal Scene; 8. Transference Perversions; 9. The Temptation of Transgression; Notes; References; Index.
