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Despite the recent interest in erotic countertransference and self-disclosure, little has been written about these phenomena when both analyst and patient are the same gender. Since homoerotic feelings can surface in any treatment, regardless of the participants' sexual orientation, this may well be a phobic avoidance that restricts many treatments, as well as our profession. I propose that the analyst's awareness of homoerotic feelings in the countertransference – including struggling with ways to express them – ultimately can create an atmosphere of safety. I offer an extended case example of one man with whom I colluded to ignore frightening aspects of his sexual fantasies. It was only by using my erotic countertransference, especially at a charged and pivotal moment, that I was able to help the patient begin to integrate split-off aspects of his sexuality.
Sherman underscores the tenacity of phobic avoidance of homoeroticism, especially between men. Homophobia and anxieties related to gender identity are prevalent. I agree with Sherman that the feeling of being psychically penetrated can represent a particular threat to men. Sherman's use of the image of opening Pandora's box reveals a fear of a vulnerable, >vaginal< opening in men. In defense, rigidly >professional< relationships may prevail. This clinical scenario often repeats an early developmental dynamic with the father erotic desire between males has a deep genetic history of dissociation and denial. Psychoanalytic theorists have had difficulty approaching this topic of passions for the same sex. Thinking further about elements that might entrench this dread and avoidance, I focus on the image of >being bad on the side,< with its potential meaning with regard to the primal scene. Homoeroticism might unconsciously register as a form of >cheating< on the heterosexual, reproductive couple – not sanctioned, tabooed, >cursed,< and thus particularly tantalizing and frightening. Analytic understanding of male development allows for the recognition of an especially strong sense of both attraction and danger for the male pairing – a >Laius curse.<
In this commentary I examine homoerotic countertransference within the context of the analyst's erotic countertransference experience. Discussing male analysts' difficulties receiving and experiencing homoerotic feelings as a function of their dominant erotic desires (along gender lines), I propose both cognitive and affective explanations to illuminate their defenses. I suggest that Sherman's erotic countertransference is best understood when viewed as a product of both induced feelings emanating from his patient's dissociated sexual abuse and also his anxiety and shame in response to particular relational configurations with his patient that arouse him. Finally, I point to the site of the transgressive as integral to the construction of erotic desire and suggest shifts that need to occur in the erotic subjectivity of this dyad so that the treatment can move forward.
This paper addresses the postmodern critique of unified-self theories that argues that the self is not unified but multiple, not a static entity but in constant flux, not a separate center of initiative but intersubjectively constituted. The author proposes that there are two kinds of division in self-experience: the dissociative divisions of multiple-self theory, and a division, akin to the divisions between Freud's structural agencies, between what are here termed the >intersubjective self< and >primary subjective experience.< In contrast to dissociated self-states, which occur in different moments in time, these two dimensions of self-experience occur simultaneously indeed, what is most important about them is their relationship. The author suggests that it is this intrapsychic relationship, as it occurs in a given psychological moment, that determines the qualities of self-experience that are emphasized in unified-self theories: such qualities as cohesiveness versus fragmentation authenticity vs. falseness vitality versus depletion optimal versus nonoptimal self-regulation and agency versus feeling one is at the mercy of others. Furthermore, a major organizer of the intersubjective self is early identifications, especially >identifications with the other's response to the self.< The implications of these concepts for therapeutic action are discussed and illustrated with an extended account of an analytic case.