You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
This paper engages a Winnicottian formulation of the analytic field to highlight the often unspoken, implicit erotic dimensions of analytic work. Material from an analysis with a very inhibited, emotionally constricted man shows both patient and analyst encountering difficulty in “locating” each other within the analytic field. Paradoxically, a felt sense of connection was also palpable, and possibly/impossibly erotic. Movement in the treatment required the development of what the analyst came to think of as an “erotic sonar”—a “sounding” in the erotic body of each participant that could indicate the place of creative connection. A sensing in the body for the “feel” of the analytic dyad became a kinetic reading of emotional closeness or distance, as well as indicating the subtle, and shifting, tones of the relationship. Emphasis is placed on bodily experience in a subjective registering of the erotic, both as sexuality and as a more general experience of passion, vitality, and creativity.