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Traditionally women therapists have written much less than their male colleagues about the erotic transference and countertransference. In the last few years this trend has been corrected by the publication of several books by women writers about the erotic in psychoanalysis. This, by W rye and Welles, stands out impressively as a major contribution to our understanding.
The focus of the book is the erotic nature of pre-oedipal experience between mother and child and how this is replayed in the transference/countertransference. The authors acknowledge that working with this early erotic material is difficult but is a ‘goldmine’ if worked through in the analysis: ‘The greatest danger to analyst and patient alike is they may fail to recognize early eroticism’ (p. 86). The subject is explored in four sections: story-making, maternal erotic transferences and countertransferences, perversions as derangements of desire and, finally, permutations and transformations related to gender.
Classical object relations theory has tended to focus on the nurturing side of the mother while ignoring the erotic aspects. Wrye and Welles take up this neglect. They emphasize the sensual bonding or ‘body loveprinting’ (p. 34) between mother and baby. This forms the basis of all eroticism. The two authors locate the origins of erotic experience in the contacts dealing with body fluids: after the amniotic fluid comes milk, drool, urine, faeces, mucus, spit, tears, perspiration. The seminal and vaginal fluids of adult erotic play are a symbolic extension of the earliest sensual fluids. The mother's ministrations of these fluids create a sensual adhesion to the relationship. The maternal erotic transference and erotic countertransference recreate the sensual erotic contact between mother and infant; the maternal erotic transference is a positive and necessary transforming phenomenon in psychoanalytic treatments.
The maternal erotic transference may first manifest in the analytic setting in concre