You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Sexually open relations are discussed frequently in analytic seminars and in casual discussions among psychoanalysts. However, no investigations have presented these relationships from a psychoanalytic point of view or defined them as primarily two types of behaviors: group sex and open marriage. Also, no descriptions of these two behaviors have considered how they are similar and dissimilar from a psychoanalytic perspective. Yet a review of the literature reveals only a single comment on this omission. Fried (1972, p. 7) wonders what happens to the “old fixations and transferences” in sexually open relationships.
The aim in this paper is to amend this omission by defining and describing group sex and open marriage, and by presenting some of the most important psychodynamics and defenses that are related to them. Briefly, group sex (also referred to as “swinging”) is defined as people having sexual relations as a couple with at least one other individual (Bartell, 1971). Open marriage is defined as an honest and open relationship between two equal partners with role flexibility, in which honesty rather than fidelity is the priority.
Clinical illustrations from a total of eight cases have been drawn from a period covering nine years. These have been combined with a reading of the literature and with personal interviews with Nena O'Neill, an anthropologist and co-author of the best-selling book, Open Marriage, and with Dr. Arline Rubin. Dr. Rubin, a sociologist, has conducted extensive research on the open marriages of over one hundred couples (O'Neill & O'Neill, 1972; Rubin, 1979). These couples have maintained sexually open marriages for periods as brief as six months and as long as 17 years.