The Eroticized Transference: A Tool for the Reconstruction of Childhood Sexual Trauma

I would like to state from the start my theoretical and clinical position in regards to the study of transference: in my view transference and countertransference are inseparable from one another. The analyst can not fully inform about the patient's transference without simultaneously sharing his or her corresponding response; only the two together would give an accurate view of the dynamics, the context and the relational [what Atwood and Stolorow (1984) calls the “intersubjective”] climate in which the patients material is fully revealed. I share this view of the intrinsic connectedness of the material and of the importance of the analyst's countertransference in detecting unconscious aspects of the patient's material and in interpreting relational dilemmas and defenses that use the analyst's subjectivity with those authors and others (Eber, 1990; Racker, 1968). From my perspective what the patient shows one analyst about his or her transference is being sculpted and modified by the analyst's conscious and unconscious response. What is disclosed as well as what is hidden, what flourishes and unfolds in the patient's transference is in direct relation to the ability of the analyst to perceive those aspects and to understand them, is inhibited by his or her urge to reject them or misinterpret them. Thus a given transference/countertransference paradigm is only representative of that dyad's capacity to illustrate, give voice, or permit what those two protagonists allow. It still happens very frequently that analysts reporting on a patient's case mention only the transference as if they are uninvolved or their response does not illuminate the patient's history. In the 1950s, Racker (1968) in Argentina and Searles (1959) in the U.S., postulated the inevitability of the analyst's response and examined it systematically to enlighten us about the patient. Racker commented