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This is an important text that is in danger of being lost on bookshop shelves, partly because of its unhelpful, unimaginative title, and partly because of an insipid cover design (Cupids with bows and arrows), both of which trivialize the serious subject matter within: namely, difficulties that the patient and therapist encounter when confronted with the raw face of intimacy, in whatever form that might take.
The book's ten contributors are all well known, and represent a wide spectrum of theoretical stances (two Kleinian, one Lacanian, three Jungian, one Kohutian, and three Independent). There is also an almost equal representation of male (six) and female (four) viewpoints, with no obvious (stereotypical) links between gender and content. Books and papers on this subject seem inevitably (and tiresomely) to present a male therapist who has to contend with his own sexual/erotic feelings and/or those of a female patient; much to its credit, this book accepts the female therapist as equally capable of sexual and erotic feelings towards her patients - male and female - as well as the male therapist as being capable of tender, maternal feelings towards his. The authors accept the inevitability of powerful emotions - regardless of gender - whether on or behind the couch.
The book is divided into three parts, which seem slightly contrived as there is much overlap in subject matter. The titles speak for themselves: Part 1 covers ‘Love and The Erotic: Developmental Issues and Their Relevance to Clinical Practice’ (Jackie Gerrard, Sheila Gordon, Jean Thomson); Part 2, ‘Progressive and Regressive Aspects of the Erotic Transference and Countertransference’ (David Mann, Ronald Doctor, Nathan Field, Martin Stanton, Marco Chiesa); Part 3, ‘Sexual Abuse and Its Impact on Psychotherapy’ (Fiona Gardner, Andrew Samuels, David Mann).
Thorny subjects are tackled in each chapter: for example, Jackie Gerrard confronts the issue that ‘love’ seems to have become a dirty word in our profess