The Sexual Feelings of the Therapist

The central premise of this presentation is that counter-transference is only one of many transactions within the psychotherapeutic dyad in which the therapist may have a sexual feeling.

This premise originated with an incident that accurred while I was a psychoanalytic candidate. While working with a regressed schizophrenic girl I found myself with an erection. Note the term, “I found myself” indicating that I did not take primary responsibility for the vicissitudes of my sexual anatomy. To add to my discomfiture, the patient, who had been a talented artist accustomed to detail, brought in a dream indicating that she had indeed noted the phenemenon described. I rushed to the next session with my analyst Bernard Robbins, anxious to root out what was to me a most disturbing bit of personal pathology. To my surprise, Dr. Robbins remarked that it would be good for the patient to know that she was still attractive to men.

One of the therapist's finest therapeutic tools are his feelings which can serve as a sensitive barometer to the non-verbal, beyond conscious awareness of the transactions occurring; and as a therapeutic communicative component designed to interrupt pathologic function and promote healthy change.

The therapist may have sexual responses in many transactions. Among these transaction are countertransference reactions and ploys by the patient which are designed to elicit a sexual response from the therapist. These ploys may be sub-liminal and may not be detectable by any method except in the process of “putting himself in the place of” the patient as well as totally projecting himself into the component role, may have to experience the total range of feelings in order to be able to discover the nature of the ongoing unconscious transactions.

There are also transactions in which the sexual response of the therapist is an accurate and appropriate appreciation of the patient's attractiveness. When the therapist is struggling mightily to reach the patient, his sex