The problem of sexual boundary violations in psychoanalytic therapies was endemic for the founding generation of psychoanalysts and remains so for analytic therapists to this day. Its persistence in our field reflects the fact that each of us contains powerful unconscious forces that can drive us towards boundary crossings and boundary violations. Contemporary views of the analytic process, including the impossibility of neutrality, objectivity and abstinence and the therapist's irreducible subjectivity, are used to explicate the dynamic forces involved. Personal and institutional responses to sexual boundary violations are considered.