Supervision of erotic transference and countertransference. Erotic or eroticized transference

Managing Emotions Erving Goffman (1959), in his book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, which is today considered a classic work in social psychology, used the theater metaphor to describe man's attempts to present himself to the world. To a certain extent, the whole world is

Button control The best way to lose in a game of your own has nothing to do with preparation or smarts. People lose because they don’t have time to press the button after the prearranged signal. Press too soon - the host will not have time to finish reading the question.

Transference Healing of Illness For this ritual, a cairn must be built by the side of the road. The number of stones is determined by the years of life. In children up to a year - months of life. Place stones with sharp or similar places inside. Stones for construction must be collected on the field.

Energy Management Energy is the “fuel” that we use to keep our bodies alive. The latest psychological research provides valuable information on how to maintain optimal fuel levels. And the first step

Chapter VI Handling Transfer

Working through and eliminating transference is a necessary part of analytic therapy. At the initial stage, positive transference helps to establish a trusting relationship between patient and analyst. In the course of analytic work, this positive transference can take on an eroticized direction or become negative, which introduces complications into analytic therapy. But the understanding that in the transference of tender and hostile feelings to the doctor, the patient's previous, albeit somewhat transformed attitude towards other persons is reflected, leads to the realization of unconscious desires and inclinations. Analytic work is directed against the new artificial neurosis. Its overcoming and elimination of the transference thereby contributes to the liberation from the disease that initially brought suffering to the patient.

Transference neurosis

Considering the problem of transference, Freud proceeded from the fact that in the process of analysis, the patient's early mental experiences come to life. The revival of these experiences takes place not so much in the form of memories as in the form of the patient's relationship to the personality of the analyst. There is a kind of copying, reprinting of what was already in the depths of the patient's psyche. But the newly revived desires and fantasies are transferred from the former person, significant for the patient, to the personality of the analyst. At the same time, the initial disease with which the patient went to the doctor undergoes a certain change. More precisely, his illness develops in such a direction that it acquires, as it were, a new neurosis. Freud called the new creation of the disease transference neurosis. This transference neurosis is nothing but a "new variant of an old illness" or an "artificial neurosis" that requires the same close attention on the part of the analyst as the illness with which the patient has come to him. The neurotic symptoms characteristic of the old disease lose their original meaning and adapt themselves to the new variant of the disease, with the result that the analyst has to take into account the change that has taken place during the analysis. Thus, the direction of therapeutic work shifts from the study of the origins of the original neurotic illness to the study of transference neurosis.

Thus, therapeutic treatment encounters an additional difficulty, due to the fact that the analyst himself becomes the center of the transference neurosis, as the object to which the patient transfers his feelings and experiences. Not only does the analyst have to contend with various resistances of the patient, but the transference complicates his already difficult therapeutic activity. New morbid psychic products that have arisen in the process of analysis may necessarily give rise to doubts about the effectiveness of psychoanalysis as such.

Indeed, what kind of treatment is this, in the process of which a new disease arises - transference neurosis? What is the point in therapeutic activity, leading

Is it not so much a simplification as a complication of the analytic situation? Wouldn't it be better to resort to other means of therapy that do not allow the emergence of transference as such, which makes it difficult to treat patients?

Presumably, Freud understood that with the discovery of transference neurosis, these and similar questions could arise both among opponents and supporters of psychoanalysis. For the former, such tricky questions implied a devaluation of psychoanalytic therapy as ineffective and creating unnecessary hardship for the physician. For the latter, the very posing of such questions and the subsequent answers to them contributed to the development of the theory and practice of psychoanalysis, since the difficulties of therapeutic work are a stimulus for the creative activity of analysts.

In dealing with the transference neuroses, Freud adhered primarily to the starting position according to which psychoanalytic treatment in itself does not create transference. In fact, psychoanalysis reveals only what is hidden in the depths of the psyche of neurotics. It should not be thought that when using other types of therapy, transference as such does not exist. The manifestation of tender or hostile feelings of the patient to the doctor takes place in any case. Another thing is that in other types of therapy, the manifestation of these feelings occurs spontaneously, and the doctor is far from always able to track them, since he may not have the slightest idea about the transference at all, while in the case of psychoanalytic therapy, work with the transference becomes one of the most important and essential tasks of analytic treatment.

The specificity of the manifestation of transference in psychoanalysis is that in In the process of analysis, transference takes the form of resistance. Therefore, in analysis it is important to wait for the moment when the transference becomes resistance. From this point on, analytical work is directed towards overcoming resistance. Ultimately, the patient's tender and hostile feelings for the doctor become the object of direct analysis, which contributes to the understanding and awareness of the neurotic disease as such. “The decisive part of the work,” Freud believed, “is done when, in relation to

In the transference to the doctor, new variants of old conflicts are created in which the patient would like to behave in the same way as he did in his time, while, using all the mental forces at his disposal, he is forced to make a different decision. In this way, transference becomes a battlefield where all opposing forces collide.

Therefore, the transference is used by the analyst as a necessary means for the successful treatment of the patient. The solution of the initial therapeutic problem is carried out by overcoming a new, artificially created neurosis. If, in the process of analytic work with the transference, the patient is able to rethink his relationship with the analyst and get rid of the transference neurosis, then he will act in a similar way in real life in relationships with other people. Drawing attention to this circumstance and to the role of transference in analytic treatment, Freud emphasized: “A person who has become normal in relation to the doctor and freed from the action of repressed drives remains so in private life when the doctor again puts himself aside.”

So, on the one hand, transference and resistance are so closely related to each other that it is far from always possible to distinguish between them. On the other hand, in psychoanalysis, the transference itself appears as a resistance

Niya, as a result of which the difficulties encountered in psychoanalytic therapy are resolved due to the fact that the transference is used to overcome resistance. In short, the mastery of the transference is a necessary prerequisite for analytic therapy, since the doctor who is able to transform the transference from a means of interfering with the treatment into an instrument for combating the patient's resistances acquires a powerful ally through which therapeutic success becomes possible. Therefore, the art of psychoanalytic treatment consists in mastering the transference of the patient in time in order to use him for his own therapeutic purposes.

Mastering the transference requires practical skills, primarily related to the ability and ability of the analyst to understand not only the mental world of patients, but also their own unconscious. The fact is that in a psychoanalytic situation, along with the transfer of the patient's feelings and experiences to the analyst, there is a phenomenon in which the analyst can transfer his own feelings and experiences to the patient. This phenomenon in psychoanalysis is called countertransference(countertransference).

The intertwining of transference and countertransference leads to the fact that in the course of therapy the analyst may find himself in such a difficult situation for him, the exit from which is fraught with the most unexpected consequences. A special kind of difficulty arises when the patient experiences an erotic transference that can arouse in the analyst a conflicting range of feelings - from temptation and desire to respond to the patient's sexual desire to fear of this attraction and resistance to being involved in a love affair.

I have already touched on the problem of the patient's eroticized transference to the analyst, and by my own example I have tried to show the difficulties that one sometimes encounters in the process of analytic therapy.

However, I think that in the light of the ideas of transference and countertransference that have been expressed, there is a need for more detailed coverage of the analytic relationship between patient and analyst. This is indeed not a simple question, the solution of which often becomes a stumbling block in the path of successful psychoanalytic treatment. It is no coincidence that Freud devoted a special work to this issue, which he published in 1915 under the title "Remarks on Love in the Transference."

Suppose that in the course of analytic therapy a young, pretty, attractive woman falls in love with her analyst. She may at first hide her feelings, not only from the analyst, but also from herself. However, as the feeling of falling in love grows to incredible strength and completely captures the woman, she is unable to fight the passion that has surged over her and confesses to the analyst her love for him. Having become acquainted with transference in theory, on a professional level, the analyst is ready to consider a woman's declaration of love as a manifestation of a positive transference on the part of the patient to him as a doctor. However, by showing sympathy for the young woman and being not so much a detached doctor who treats the patient as an impersonal object, but a man endowed with sensual desires, he can see behind the positive transference of the patient not only a repetition and reproduction of her former feelings for some other person. , but also the birth of her sensual attachment to him not as a doctor, but as a man. Under the influence of the patient's eroticized transference, he himself may be subject to such experiences as a result of which he may develop protective mechanisms associated with the suppression of sensual desires, or sexually colored response feelings no less tender than those of the patient, demanding their satisfaction.

Indeed, are there not exceptions when the eroticized transference develops into a great love of the female patient for the male analyst? Doesn't it happen when the analyst finds in the patient the only woman with whom he is ready to connect his future fate? Is it impossible for a further union of lovers,

who met in the process of analytic treatment and experienced an irresistible attraction to each other?

Attention has already been drawn to the fact that the phenomenon is transferred
ca takes place not only in the analytical situation, but also
in the educational process. Well known not so rare
cases where between students and teachers, especially
especially young girls and mature men,
relationships are established that are
performed by civil or legal marriage. So
Why is such a relationship impossible?
clients and analysts? Or, in contrast to moral
code of honor of a teacher, the Hippocratic oath
doctor reliably insures the latter against possible
the analyst's falling in love with his patient,
showing all the signs of sincere love in relation to
to him? .

There are also cases in the history of the psychoanalytic movement when relations were established between patients and analysts that, having arisen in the process of analysis, created problems that were difficult to resolve, complicated therapeutic treatment, or went beyond the usual positive transference. Thus, the relationship between the Russian patient Sabina Spielrein, who later became a well-known psychoanalyst, and the Swiss analyst Carl Gustav Jung, which began at the beginning of the century, developed in such a way that Freud was forced to give instructive instructions to the married doctor. Based on the transference of Spielrein's tender feelings for her analyst and on Jung's countertransference, their relationship developed in such a way that, judging by the information of some researchers, it developed into intimacy, although it did not undermine the family life of the analyst, who by that time (late 1908 - early 1909) father of three children.

But another case is also known when, in the early 1920s, the relationship between the young analyst Wilhelm Reich and the young girl Anna Pink, who was undergoing educational analysis with him, had a different outcome compared to Spielrein and Jung. In his therapeutic work, Reich had an understanding of transference and countertransference. However, he believed that Anna Pink's feelings for him and his own feelings for her were real, genuine, and went beyond transference and countertransference.

farm relations. After Reich understood the depth of their feelings, the analytical work between them could not continue, and Pink moved into analysis, first to another, elderly analyst G. Nunberg, and a few years later to A. Freud. The feeling of love that gripped young people resulted in the continuation of such a relationship between them, which ended with the fact that a week before the execution of his 25th birthday, Reich married Pink. True, their marriage was not durable, and subsequently they terminated the marriage bond, and Reich twice more married .

In developing the technique of psychoanalysis, Freud opposed any innovation associated with the analyst's use of eroticized transference as a means of artificially seducing the patient in order to achieve therapeutic success. There have been cases where analysts have accelerated the process of positive transference and have given patients the idea that in order to move the analysis forward, patients should fall in love with their doctor. Freud categorically objected to such a technique, considering it meaningless and far from safe for analysis as such. He proceeded from the fact that one should not be ahead of events and artificially accelerate them. The transference of tender feelings to the analyst must be spontaneous. Another thing is that the analyst must be prepared for such a manifestation of feelings on the part of the patient.

When the Hungarian psychoanalyst Sandor Ferenczi came up with the idea of active analysis, which included a less formal relationship between analyst and patient, Freud not only did not support this idea, but even reacted critically to it. In particular, he disapproved of a new technique whereby, for the purposes of therapy, the analyst may display maternal tenderness towards patients who, in childhood suffered from a lack of maternal care. Ferenczi, who held a similar point of view, used such maternal tenderness technique, in which the exchange of kisses between analyst and patient was allowed. For Freud, this technique of analysis was unacceptable. He believed that in analysis one should not go halfway with patients in satisfying their desires, including "small erotic pleasures" such as innocent kisses. At the same time, he emphasized that he was not the person who, due to

Hypocrisy or philistine conditions do not allow the possibility of exchanging kisses, as is customary in some places. lanterns as a greeting. However, Freud proceeded and | | the fact that in the cultural environment in which he had to work, a kiss meant intimate erotica, sch whose occurrence is inadmissible in the analytic situation! In addition, he expressed fear that such a “revolutionary” in the ana technique could always be found! liza, who will go beyond innocent kisses, and< нятую в психоанализе установку на отношения с пациен--тами, не допускающую послаблений во врачебной этике"| Размышляя над этими вопросами, в одном из писем Фе« ренци от 13 декабря 1931 года Фрейд выразил свою пози| цию «сурового отца», предостерегающего коллегу от ис| полнения в процессе аналитического лечения роли «нежД ной матери» по отношению к пациентам [ 11. С. 92].

The fears of the founder of psychoanalysis were not unfounded.<| венными. Примечательные случаи из аналитической ра| боты Юнга и Райха наглядно свидетельствовали о том! что трансферные и контртрансферные отношения ^ зываются реальными и действенными. Осуществленный Ференци изменения в технике анализа при умелом, ^ лифицированном их использовании способствовали те*| рапевтическому лечению, но в то же время открывал! простор для использования эротизированного переноса i личных целях аналитика, не придерживающегося вра* чебной этики или неспособного удержаться от тех иску-* шений и соблазнов, с которыми подчас сталкивается мо­лодой аналитик.

Therapeutic practice at the present stage of development shows that it can go so far that individual doctors take the intimate relationship between them and patients for granted. Of course, this has nothing to do with psychoanalysis. Moreover, it contradicts it in principle and testifies to a complete misunderstanding of the specifics of analytic treatment, in the course of which transference and countertransference relations inevitably appear. And those? no less misunderstood, analytic therapy may include a technique that runs counter to psychoanalysis as such.

Thus, I once had a chance to talk with a young therapist who, while studying psychoanalytic technique, shared his “positive” experience in treating patients. He said that such women often come to his appointment, who need only one thing: to satisfy their sexual desires. In response to my explanations about the careful and correct work with the transference, he stated that he had more than once to meet the needs of his patients, to satisfy their erotic demands, and this most often gave a positive result. As he puts it, some female patients come to him "not as a doctor, but as a man," and their cure depends on his actions as a man, not as a doctor. When I drew his attention to the fact that the psychoanalytic couch is intended for something completely different, psychoanalysis is a method of treating neurotic diseases, and his ideas about the possibilities of treatment not only do not correspond to analytic therapy, but also radically contradict it, the young analyst hastened to turn the conversation in a different direction. However, it seemed to me that he was not at all embarrassed by the fact that he sees in the patients who come to him, first of all, sexually unsatisfied women, to whom he is ready to provide appropriate assistance, acting as a male doctor, and not a male doctor. If such a therapist pretends to be a psychoanalyst, then this can give patients a misconception about psychoanalysis. In fact, all this is as far from psychoanalysis as a heart surgery performed by a doctor on the basis of a patient's complaint that, as a result of unrequited love, his heart is completely broken.

An inexperienced analyst may see the patient's erotic transference as an invitation to intimacy. However, by satisfying the patient's sexual desires and believing that a successful treatment is thereby achieved, the analyst, as a doctor, undoubtedly suffers his defeat. His authority is reduced to nothing, since, on the one hand, the doctor is reduced to the position of a lover and, therefore, to a lesser or greater extent, becomes a toy in the hands of the woman who has the upper hand on him, and on the other hand, therapy turns into a kind of love affair. , within the co-

The second female patient once again finds confirmation that she is irresistible, and all men, including the co-f of the therapist she has tempted, are insignificant creatures, ready! drag behind any skirt. The doctor only thinks that while walking | towards the sexual desires of the patient, he thereby? heals her. In reality, everything happens on the contrary | | mouth. It not only fails to achieve its therapeutic goal, but also devalues analytic treatment. Having achieved your *! victory, the female seductress can present! their requirements to the doctor as a lover or, in the case of pre-*| cut off an intimate relationship with him, go to another therapist, where, most likely, he will try to use the same strategy and repeat the previous experience of seducing the doctor as a man.

At one time, Freud emphasized that, once in; a similar situation, the doctor will never be able to achieve! its goal is to free the patient from neurosis. Using | figurative comparison, he noted that in this case between)! doctor and patient played out the scene described in | a joke about a shepherd and an insurance agent. At the insistence of relatives, a shepherd is invited to the house where an unbelieving, seriously ill person was lying. Relatives of the unbelieving agent hope that on the verge of death he will repent before the shepherd, receive remission of sins, and gain faith. The shepherd passes into the chambers of a seriously ill person, and they, left alone, talk among themselves. Their conversation lasts so long that the relatives in the other room have hope for a favorable outcome of co-existence. They patiently wait for the end of the conversation, and when the shepherd finally leaves the sickroom, his relatives will learn the following. Contrary to their expectations, the unbelieving insurance agent was not converted. But, which, of course, no one expected, the pastor left the house of a seriously ill person insured.

If, in the case of an eroticized transference, the patient succeeds in seducing the analyst, then this means an undoubted triumph for her, but a complete defeat for the doctor. If, in meeting the patient's loving harassment, the analyst justifies his actions with references to her effective cure, then this is either a rationalization of his own desires, or a self-deception associated with a misunderstanding of the essence of analytic therapy. Instead of something to remember and reproduce

as psychic material, keeping it in her psyche, the patient realized her unconscious sexual desires, having won another victory over a man. Instead of working through the psychic material associated with her transference with the patient, the analyst succumbed to her charms and entered into an intimate relationship, thereby depriving himself of real analytic work. As the intimate relationship between them continues, the patient will manifest all the pathological reactions of her love life, the development of which led her to the doctor, while the analyst, who naively believes that the satisfaction of the patient's desires is the key to her recovery, will be able to do nothing to correct or eliminate her pathological reactions and neurotic symptoms. “The love affair,” observed Freud, “puts an end to the possibility of exerting influence through analytic treatment; the combination of both is nonsense."

Thus, in order to succeed in therapeutic work, the analyst should not follow the lead of the patient and satisfy his desires. In this regard, the position of the young therapist, according to which, since the patient came to him with a very specific purpose, why not help her achieve pleasure, is not so much immoral, from the point of view of medical ethics, as erroneous in therapeutic terms. But what is the analyst to do when he witnesses the development of an eroticized transference on the part of the patient? How should he behave? What strategy to follow?

The Patient and the Psychoanalyst [Fundamentals of the Psychoanalytic Process] Joseph Sandler

EROTIZED TRANSFER

EROTIZED TRANSFER

In 1915, Freud described some cases of "transfer love" in which a patient undergoing psychoanalytic treatment reported her "love" for the psychoanalyst (Freud, 1915a). Although the "usual" erotic transference may be a normal phenomenon that is successfully overcome in the course of analysis, some patients experience this feeling to such an extent that they refuse to continue the course of treatment and may reject the interpretation of their feeling as relating to the past and generally stop further attempts to find out the nature and the cause of the symptoms which had hitherto given rise to their complaint. Analytical sessions are used by them to express their feelings, to derive pleasure from the presence of their beloved, respectively, these patients seek reciprocity from the object of their emotions. Although Freud does not believe that in such a case there must necessarily be a strong neurotic disorder and does not consider transference of this kind as an inevitable contraindication to the use of psychoanalytic therapy, he nevertheless believes that sometimes it is possible to recommend the transfer of the patient to another specialist. He writes about such patients as people endowed with "natural passion", genuine "children of nature."

When such a "passionate" transference reaches such a significant degree that the demand for reciprocity arises and psychoanalytic work ceases to be productive, then, apparently, one can speak of a serious pathology. (Sometimes the term "sexualized" transference is used, but since it covers a much wider range of phenomena than eroticized transference, its use as a synonym for "eroticized" should be avoided - see Coen, 1981. The term "erotic transference" should be retained for positive transference accompanied by sexual fantasies, the unreal nature of which the patient is fully aware of). Alexander (Alexander, 1950) drew attention to the problem of the dependent patient demanding mutual love from the psychoanalyst and striving to give him his own. Blitzen (whose unpublished remarks are cited in Rapaport, 1966 and Greenson, 1967) is credited with being the first to make the connection between the attempt to make a relationship with a psychoanalyst a sexual character and serious psychopathology. Rappoport (1956), in a detailed discussion of this issue, writes that "according to Blitzer, if in the transference situation the analyst is treated 'as if he were' the parent, then transference eroticization leads to the analyst 'being' that parent (this the statement can be considered an example of a certain exaggeration, which is not uncommon in psychoanalytic research; the author apparently means that the patient in this case refers to the psychoanalyst as to a parent, not recognizing any "as if" that takes place in case with other patients). The problems that this formulation entails are obvious, and we will return to them later.

Rappoport argues that patients who exhibit an intense erotic component in the transference "express from the outset an insistent desire for the psychoanalyst to act as a parent to them." They feel no embarrassment about such desires and openly express their anger if the doctor refuses to obey their demands. Rappoport establishes a relationship between the response to intense sexual demands during the psychoanalytic process and the severity of the patient's psychopathology. This eroticization of the transference, corresponding to a severe disturbance of the sense of reality, is a symptom of a severe form of the disease. In this case, the patients are not neurotic, but rather represent cases of "borderline condition" or "outpatient (temporary) schizophrenia". The author further remarks that "although the analytic situation is particularly conducive to such a distortion of reality, these patients in all cases tend to impose on any person of any significance the role of a parent."

Rappoport agrees with Blitzen that for such patients the psychoanalyst is indeed a parent. However, he does not claim that they are so detached from reality as to consider the psychoanalyst as their own. real parent. In any case, the specific nature of their transfer is beyond doubt. The transference is not hidden here, "the patient shows by all his behavior that he longs for the transformation of his fantasy into reality." He believes that in the person of the psychoanalyst, in fact, he can find a parent who, by his actions, is able to resemble a real or desired parent - while the view of the psychoanalyst as a doctor is completely lost.

The claim that such feelings and desires constitute transference is, of course, subject to dispute. In 1951, Nunberg advanced the view that the patient's attempts to transform the psychoanalyst into his parent should not be regarded as transference. He wrote of a patient "whose fixed fixation on her father gave rise to a desire to see his incarnation in the analyst, and since her desire to turn the latter into a person, identical her father could not be fulfilled, all attempts to establish a working transfer were fruitless. If this patient were trying to unconsciously superimpose images from her past onto the doctor's personality, then, according to Nunberg, we would be dealing with a transference. However, "she did not project the image of her father onto the psychoanalyst - she tried to get the doctor to change in such a way that he became like her father." In this case, Nunberg is obviously referring to the phenomenon later described by Rappoport. In the previous chapter on the transference (Chapter 4), we discussed “covert recurrence of previously experienced events and connections in the transference, bearing in mind that the patient is not aware of the repetition of the past in the present. Although, in the light of the conclusions of this chapter, the phenomena described by Rappoport do not fall under the definition of the term "transference", it is still quite possible for the patient to experience an eroticized transference without realizing that there is a repetition of the past. Rappoport's work (Rapaport, 1956) is mainly devoted to the problem of how to deal with a patient who wants to realize his sexual feelings in relation to the psychoanalyst and receive from him a reciprocal feeling. An article by Menninger (1958) is also devoted to the same problem, who considers eroticized transference as a manifestation of resistance, characterized by a demand for love and sexual satisfaction on the part of the psychoanalyst, a demand that the patient does not consider to be something inadequate or strange for himself (that is, it is ego syntonic).

Technical issues are also central to Saul's paper (Saul, 1962). He more specifically than Rappoport relates the eroticized transference to real frustration in early life, suggesting that the hostility and anger resulting from this may find its recurrence in relation to the psychoanalyst. In addition, the extreme display of love is partly a means of protecting the doctor from hostile feelings. Hostility and destructiveness in such patients are also noted by other researchers (for example, Nunberg, 1951; Greenson, 1967). Greenson links erotic transference to other mental disorders. In particular, he writes: “Patients who suffer from what has come to be called 'erotized' transference are prone to very destructive reactions ... Transferences in such patients always come from underlying impulses of hatred. The only thing that guides them is the desire to give vent to their feelings and to prevent the psychoanalytic treatment being carried out with them. Speaking about his own experience with such patients, Greenson writes that “they willingly came to the sessions, but not to delve into the analysis, but only to enjoy the physical approach to the doctor. All my attempts at analytic intervention found absolutely no response. A similar thought is expressed by Swartz (1967), citing the example of a patient who clearly expected the psychoanalyst to respond to his feelings. The eroticized transference patient is generally unsuitable for treatment by classical methods of psychoanalysis, since patients of this kind are not able to fulfill the requirements for patients in classical psychoanalysis (Greenson, 1967; see also Wexler, 1960) and cannot adequately participate in the formation of a therapeutic alliance. In 1973, Blume prepared a detailed review of the eroticized transference literature. He emphasized the need to distinguish it from erotic transference, which the authors of this study fully support. Bloom defines eroticized transference as

“an intense, vivid, irrational, erotic attraction to the psychoanalyst, characterized by an undisguised, seemingly ego-syntonic demand for reciprocity and sexual gratification on his part. These erotic demands may not seem unreasonable or unreasonable to the patient at all. Frequent immersion in erotic fantasies can also occur during the daytime hours of the patient's life or involve situations not related to psychoanalysis, and also result in fantasies about what will happen after the completion of treatment ... The intensity and persistence of the eroticized transference, the complexity of its interpretation, the constant attempts to seduce the psychoanalyst to the joint reaction of the situation, as well as the periodic reaction of such a transference, in which the role of the psychoanalyst is assigned to another person, confirms the presence of complex infantile reactions here. The latter represent not ordinary reactions of transference love, and such patients resemble intractable addicts. Their eroticized transferences are passionate, persistent, irresistible... The fear they are aware of is not the fear of regression or retribution, but disappointment and bitterness about the unreceived response, the unanswered feeling. Through projection and denial they can accept that the analyst really loves them.”

“attempts to sexually seduce the child, especially during the oedipal phase, instinctive overstimulation in the absence of parental protection and support that normally occurs during this period of life. Intense conflict related to masturbation; tolerance (tolerance) to incestuous and homosexual behavior in the family, in the bathroom or bedroom, etc.; resumption and recurrence of precocious incestuous sexual activity during adolescence.

“Such patients often take part in children's games that contain elements of sexual seduction, for example, “playing doctor”, group mimicry in the game “daddy-mom”, or playing “grandfather and grandmother's bed”, etc. Here analysis can be seen as a rewarding and fraught game of seduction. Narcissistic vulnerability and fragility are associated with parental indifference and lack of empathy. Erotization often hides the trauma of recurrent seduction and overstimulation, which results in distrust of others and sadomasochism.

Blum does not advocate a return to a theory of neurogenesis based on seduction, but nevertheless emphasizes the pathogenetic role of seduction and trauma in the origin of eroticized transference. He also points out that such patients have pronounced manifestations of narcissism. This finds expression in the patient's fantasies, according to which he is a "favorite" and generally very unusual. Such manifestations of narcissism "may be veiled by eroticized attempts to curry favor with others in order to maintain a sense of self-esteem." Bloom goes on to conclude that

“The eroticized transference has numerous determinants and can proceed in many different ways. By its nature, this transference resembles a highly distorted form of the expected erotic transference. Erotic transference is a fairly common phase of analysis, although it can have varying degrees of intensity and repetitiveness. There is a dynamic space (continuum) stretching from feelings of sympathy for strong sexual attraction, from ubiquitous desires associated with sexual transference, to a conscious, ego-syntonic predisposition to erotic transference. It is this persistent, conscious, erotic passion associated with the transference that is, in fact, the eroticized transference.

The eroticized transference of the type discussed above was observed, but mostly in female patients in relation to male psychoanalysts. Lester (1985) notes that, apart from a single work by Bibring-Lehner (1936), there is no literature describing such transference in male patients in relation to female psychoanalysts. She suggests that “the expression of strong erotic longings in a male patient towards a female analyst is inhibited by the fantasy of an all-consuming pre-oedipal mother. In female patients, by contrast, these feelings are most fully expressed (see also Person, 1985; Wrye & Welles, 1989). While the above is true in most cases, it cannot be said that it is always true.

Although many researchers single out those elements that reflect the repetition of the past in erotic transference, in our opinion, protective aspects, in particular, the function of protection against the occurrence of depressive affect, are also extremely important.