Discussion of Jacob Swartz's Article, The Erotized Transference and Other Transference Problems

In his “Remarks about Transference-Love,” Freud1 refers to an occasional experience wherein a hitherto most pliant female patient suddenly loses understanding and interest for the treatment and wants to

speak or hear only about her love for the analyst for which she demands response. The term “erotized transference” (love) later introduced by Lionel Blitzsten is a tautology and means to indicate that we are dealing with the superlative. Such a passionate manifestation of love is either too early and premature or too vehement, or both.

One might be inclined to assume that the young lady who has precipitously fallen in love with the analyst and wants him to have sexual intercourse with her on the analytic couch is a so-called nymphomaniac or, at any rate, oversexed. She may not even mind giving this somehow glamorous impression. She will, therefore, sober rapidly when informed that there is no such phenomenon as being oversexed and that people who appear that way are usually undersexed.

She has further to be told that there is nothing wrong with her loving the analyst, as there is never anything wrong with loving, but that her urgent craving for sexual involvement with him may not even have anything to do with love and may be an expression of hostility.

Finally, she must be told that her demand for sexual intimacies may be only a screen for her desire to be cuddled and cared for by a solicitous mother. “Even if the patient claims that she feels humiliated by the analyst's lack of sexual advances, she knows such advances to be against the rules of treatment and need not be told so. Under no circumstances must the analyst show that he feels frustrated or embarrassed. His reply to the patient must not be apologetic.”2

Dr. Jacob Swartz has offered four instructive examples of the technical difficulties in managing erotized transferences. The information supplie