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In this paper, I explore the relational challenges of sexuality in the consulting room, as informed by developmental studies and ‘moments’ theory, and discuss the contentious issue of self-disclosure. I acknowledge that there has been a hiatus in recent decades in the discussion of psychosexuality in psychoanalysis, linked to a shift from Freud's drive theory to post-Freudian developmental theories, as well as to the change in the role of the therapist that this has entailed. While I also acknowledge that these changes have resulted in a certain de-eroticization and de-sexualization of psychoanalysis, I point to research showing that sexuality is, in fact, very much alive in the consulting room, but also to a gap in training on such issues, and to a concomitant lacuna in the literature discussing sexual attraction between therapist and patient. Before discussing the ethical and relational challenges of sexuality in the consulting room, I summarize the evolution of sexuality in psychoanalytic thinking and briefly discuss relevant developmental perspectives. I question the view that a developmental model is not suited to effectively working with sexual material. I illustrate theoretical points with a clinical case study, a development of previously published work (Renn, 2012).
PAUL RENN is a UKCP-accredited psychoanalytic psychotherapist in private practice in London. He qualified as a social worker in the 1980s and has a background in the National Probation Service where he specialized in working with violent individuals and couples. He subsequently trained at the Centre for Attachment-based Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy. He has presented papers at international conferences, devised and facilitated workshops on attachment and trauma and violent attachments and had articles published in professional journals and books in the UK and abroad. He is a member of the Forum for Independent Psychotherapists, the BACP, the International Attachment Network, the Register of Trauma Specialists, the International Association for Forensic Psychotherapy, and the International Association for Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy. He is the author of The Silent Past and the Invisible Present: Memory, Trauma, and Representation in Psychotherapy (Routledge, 2012), and is on the editorial board of Psychoanalytic Inquiry. Address for correspondence: 13 Seaton Road, Twickenham TW2 7AT. []