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Most practicing psychoanalysts have, at some point in their careers, the unsettling experience of a patient who develops an erotic transference. Being admired or respected is one thing, being the object of an intense and unremitting erotic preoccupation is something else entirely. Such a transference is often experienced by the analyst as disruptive, irritating, and perhaps threatening. The classical psychoanalytic position views erotic transference as a resistance, and when unanalyzable, termination of the analysis is recommended. Harriet Kimble Wrye and Judith K. Welles, the co-authors of this book take quite a different approach to this complicated clinical issue. Far from seeing the emergence of erotic transference as an unwelcome, disruptive influence, they consider it to be an opportunity for transformation and cure on the road to mature object love.
The problem of erotic transference has been acknowledged since the early days of psychoanalysis. In Freud and Breuer's work with Anna O., Breuer chose to flee from the erotic implications of his patient's transference, while Freud went on to develop a psychoanalytic theory of transference and resistance. Despite Freud's emphasis on the importance of libido, there has been a dearth of papers and books on the topic of erotic transference and even less on the subject of erotic countertransference. This new book is a welcomed addition to the psychoanalytic literature on this neglected topic.
The Narration of Desire emphasizes one aspect of erotic transference-the early maternal erotic transference and its countertransferential counterpart. The authors disagree with the prevailing classical view of erotic