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Even if not working within the conceptual terms of psychoanalysis, sex workers engage directly with the affective and embodied dimensions of sex, love, attachment, the exchange of money, and many other dynamics that have parallels with analytic work. Likewise, while the ends of sex work and the position of the sex worker are different than that of the analyst, sex workers are nonetheless often in the midst of transferences that involve an intertwining of the physical, emotional, and sexual aspects of fantasy.
What, then, might be unlocked if we open up psychoanalytic spaces to the accounts of sex workers and their clients? I ask this question in the context of Division 39’s conference topic, Sex, through the work of psychoanalysts Nicholas Abraham and Maria Torok, specifically their reflections on what they call the psychic crypt or tomb. In this reflection, I draw from two preliminary interviews on touch, trauma, and somatic wisdom from an ongoing project. The first is with a sex worker, Jessie Sage, who has given permission for her worker name to be included in this account. The second is with a therapist who has coordinated care with Jessie to provide sex work services for her clients. I present their accounts here not to speak for or represent other sex workers or therapists but instead to consider in a form similar to the analytic case study how sex workers and therapists working together may collaborate in a queer, haptic, feminist ethic of what Torok and Abraham (1994) call “cryptonomic analysis” to access and unveil experiences that could otherwise remain outside of signification.
In our interview, Jessie tells me about the ways she attunes to her clients in navigating sexual fantasy, asking questions of herself almost as an analyst might of the transference: “Am I in the role of mentor? Am I in the role of a lover? A stand-in for their ex-wife? Am I in the role of almost a parental figure? Am I there as a caretaker? Am I there as a teacher? Am I there as a lo