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It is both an honor and a challenge to reply in full measure to the sincerity and serious thoughtfulness that Drs. Cooper, Gabbard, and Hoffman have brought to their reading of my work. After reading each of their commentaries several times over, I am left with the conviction that so little has been written on the topic of erotic transference-countertransference that we are all here engaged in the collaborative definition of a new conversation. Our questions to one another define the substance of a discourse, and, when we differ in our points of view, we merely begin to define the boundaries of developing clinical and theoretical innovation. If find myself disagreeing with very little that has been said in the three commentaries, and I am therefore afforded the privilege of not having to respond point for point but of being allowed to wander, if you will, and permit myself to muse about some thoughts that became stimulated and elaborated around my reading of these insightful and provocative essays. Where I may leave certain specific disagreements and challenges unresponded to, I do so out of a conviction that the questions left to ponder serve us better than premature answers. It is simply, in my estimation, too early in this conversation to presume “to know.”
Each of us is conceived out of the desires of two significant others, and I have come to believe that it is the individual, unique journey undertaken by each of us, the journey to know, own and manage our own idiosyncratically organized systems of yearning and need that arise