An erotized transference is one in which the patient expects the analyst to behave like a parent in reality without this wish being ego-dystonic. The gnawing hunger of these patients, ultimately for the mother, is too urgent easily to allow of the analysis becoming a learning experience. Such patients have had parents with whom they could establish no real contact. The only contact they have known is that of argument and brawl; and this they try to re-establish with the analyst, thinly disguised, if the analyst is of the opposite sex, in stormy demands for genital contact.

None the less, they can still be influenced by corrective emotional experience provided the analyst is completely sincere. He must bring into the open the patient's subtle attempts to manipulate him, indicate that he can stand an analytic failure, and show the patient the feelings of inferiority behind the defence of antagonism. The term 'erotized transference' is Blitzsten's, and his advice is several times quoted with respect.