Recent contributions to the psychoanalytic literature suggest that the classical focus on psychosexuaiity has been lost. This charge is both wrong and right. After briefly surveying the evolution of psychoanalytic thinking on sexuality and reviewing the concept of libido, this essay retrieves the word Lust from the footnotes to which Freud consigned it and remodels it into a new idea. The proposition is put forth that a postclassical theory of sex compatible with contemporary clinical and theoretical practice can emerge once sexuality is rethought in the ambiguous, potential space between Lust and libido.
The analyst's identification with his or her profession and its ethos may profoundly influence the patient's treatment in subtle and less subtle ways. A particularly noteworthy instance of this is the impact of the patient's knowing that he or she is the subject of the analyst's writings. I present illustrative material from a patient in intensive psychotherapy who had pronounced reactions, especially evident in her dream imagery, to my having written about her. This material and the issues it highlights are discussed from the vantage point of the analyst's professional self and psychoanalytic discourse, which together constitute a >third< dimension vis-à-vis the therapeutic relationship. I consider what a Lacan-inspired perspective (Muller, 1996) might contribute to a relational understanding of the impact of the analyst's professional aspect.
Post-Jungian Dialogues
(1999)
Passionate Love
(1999)
This paper addresses the gender of the analyst as an important factor in the shaping of the analytic experience. Specifically, it focuses on the notion that female analysts bring something different from what male analysts bring to the analytic dyad and that this influences and shapes the analysts’ translation of the patients’ experience – determining treatment course and therapeutic enactments. It begins with the idea that, for some men, working with a female analyst may ease the processing and metabolization of their aggression – allowing for a (re) integration of it with their sexuality and desire. The clinical material of a male analysand who sought treatment from a woman analyst is used to explore this idea within a post-Lacanian framework incorporating Kristeva's work on the maternal chora, the imaginary father or third, and the journey that the infant must make from the real to the symbolic, from biology to desire.