A Case of Erotized Transference in a Male Patient Formations and Transformations

Reported cases of sustained, overt erotized transference in the male patient—female analyst dyad appear to be relatively rare. In a paper on the subject of differences in the erotic transferences of men and women, Person (1985), citing Lester, points out that “there are almost no references in the literature in which male patients are reported to experience strong erotic transferences to their female analysts” (p. 170). Person maintains that there

seem(s) to be a difference in the expression of the erotic transference in the female patient/male therapist dyad and the male patient/female therapist dyad. In the former case, the erotic transference is more often overt, consciously experienced, intense, long-lived, and directed toward the analyst, and focuses more on love than sex; in the latter, it is muted, relatively short-lived, appears indirectly in dreams and triangular preoccupations, is seldom consciously experienced as a dominant affective motif, is frequently transposed to a woman outside the analytic situation, and most often appears as sexual rather than as a longing for love (p. 170).

More often than not, resistance to the emergence of the erotic transfer ence has been the case with male patients and their female analysts