Sociocultural Considerations in the Emergence of Sexual Feelings in Male Patients Seeing Female Therapists

The biological inequality of men and women may be the deepest source of social division and distinction. The fundamental role that anatomy has played in forging the destinies of the two sexes must be fully acknowledged, if not appreciated, in order for us to be sensitive to the possible impact of gender on the course of therapy.

As Simone de Beauvoir (1953) has pointed out, it is hard not to consider the fact that, until recently, women throughout history have been at the continual mercy of their particular biology, including menstruation, pregnancy, child-bearing, and lactation. Such issues of physiology are profound in their effect, for women have most often been dependent on others, notably men, for their very physical survival. A weaker, more vulnerable female would do well to find a strong, protective male under such circumstances.

Of equal, or perhaps greater, significance is the fact that women, as mothers, have had to deal with the reality of the human infant's prolonged helplessness. This had led to a mother-child interdependency that has molded human psychology, male and female, in all societies at all times. The complexities of this mother-child relationship are being explored at many levels (Mahler, 1975), one focus being the manner in which the role of mother has universally affected the way in which women have been perceived. This involves issues such as (1) the need to maintain a distance from the alluring nature of the symbiotic mother-child