Psychotherapy: An Erotic Relationship

By David Mann

Social Science

Routledge
Publication date: February 1997

ISBN: 9780203360385

Digital Book format: PDF (Adobe DRM)

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Psychotherapy: An Erotic Relationship explores the most intimate elements of the psychoanalytical relationship--the erotic feelings and fantasies that patients and therapists often experience towards one another. David Mann challenges the traditional view that transference and countertransference are forms of resistance which threaten the therapeutic process and argues that they are potentially a powerful source of creative transformation.

Making use of clinical material, theoretical insights and new research on infants, Mann traces erotic development back to the parent-child relationship. Drawing parallels between this relationship and the therapist/client dyad, he explains how the parent and therapist alike experience a range of erotic responses which correspond to relevant stimulus from the infant or patient. Individual chapters explore the function of the erotic within the unconscious, pre-Oedipal and Oedipal material, homoeroticism in therapy, sexual intercourse as a metaphor for psychological change, the primal scene and the difficulties of working with perversions.