The Absence of the Third and Murderous Dyads in Male to Female Erotic Transference Presenter: Andrea Celenza, Ph.D. Date: January 15, 2009

The evening's scientific meeting presenter was Andrea Celenza, Ph.D., faculty member of the Boston Psychoanalytic Society & Institute, Supervising Analyst at the Massachusetts Institute of Psychoanalysis, and Assistant Clinical Professor at the Cambridge Hospital/Harvard Medical School.

Celenza's interest in erotic transference began with her work with therapists who were court-mandated to be in treatment because they had transgressed sexual boundaries with their patients; this work allowed her to broaden her view of this area. Using one of her clinical cases she spoke about the manifestation of the erotic transference in different phases throughout treatment, the power dynamic in the female therapist and male patient analytic dyad, and how a male patient's experience of aggression and the female analyst's countertransference might potentially foster or inhibit the development of the patient's sexual transference.

Even though it is acknowledged that erotic transference also takes place between female analysts and male analysands, not much literature exists on this topic. More has been written about the erotic transference between a female patient and a male therapist, mainly because this dyad had occurred more frequently in the past. Celenza suggested that perhaps female analysts pull more for maternal transferences and less for erotic transferences. Other authors have argued that an erotic transference may not manifest because male patients have difficulty “resolving the ‘negative oedipal position’” with a female analyst, or for “fear of the patient's aggression (by either analyst or patient).” Even in the therapeutic matrix the therapist-patient dyad is influenced by societal views about current power structures between males and females. The power attributed to a therapist—especially if the therapist is a male—usually closely matches the power hierarchy of the traditional family. This, then, might foster the activation of old childhood templates, especially in rela