Erotic transference and countertransference are a well-documented, unavoidable part of long-term psychoanalytic work. Patients fall in love with their analysts, and analysts sometimes feel real desire in return.
This page covers the psychoanalytic literature on understanding and working with that phenomenon directly, rather than the broader ethics and prevention literature covered on the Therapist Sexual Feelings page.
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Erotic Transference: A Contemporary Introduction
Andrea Celenza, Routledge, 2024
Most clinicians can name the feeling and few will admit to it. Celenza’s book takes on that gap directly, arguing the psychoanalytic literature on erotic transference is thinner than the phenomenon itself warrants. Specific chapters address the temptation to disclose erotic feelings to a patient and the ongoing problem of sexual boundary violations, a subject she’s also written about directly in an earlier book of her own.
It’s the newest and broadest book here, pulling from neo-Classical, neo-Kleinian, object-relational, relational, and post-Bionian field theory rather than staying inside one tradition. It’s a useful place to start before the more historically specific books later on this page.
Psychotherapy: An Erotic Relationship: Transference and Countertransference Passions
David Mann, Routledge, 1997
Mann challenges the traditional view that erotic feelings in therapy are simply resistance to be worked through and eliminated. Instead, he argues the erotic is present in some form in nearly every therapeutic relationship and develops out of the same parent-child dynamics that shape all intimate bonds. Rather than treating it only as an obstacle, he sees it as something that can be used productively toward transformation.
Chapters work through specific manifestations including homoerotic transference and the ways transference can symbolically repeat a patient’s early experience of parental intercourse.
This is the more theoretical of the two Mann books here. It’s useful for understanding his framework before turning to the edited collection below.
Erotic Transference and Countertransference: Clinical Practice in Psychotherapy
Edited by David Mann, Routledge, 1999
This companion volume came two years after Mann’s solo book above, this time as editor rather than sole author. He brings together contributors from across the psychoanalytic spectrum, including object relations, Kleinian, Jungian, and Lacanian, to see how each tradition actually handles the erotic in the consulting room. Contributors range from love and sexual desire through to perverse and psychotic manifestations of the erotic transference. One section is devoted entirely to how childhood sexual abuse shapes the phenomenon.
Mann’s own book argues for one coherent theory of the erotic in therapy. This collection is more useful for seeing where different schools of thought actually agree and disagree with each other.
Gender, Countertransference and the Erotic Transference: Perspectives from Analytical Psychology and Psychoanalysis
Edited by Joy Schaverien, Routledge, 2006
Schaverien’s collection asks a question the other books on this page don’t center directly: how does the gender of the therapist and client specifically shape the erotic transference? Sections work through gender and the erotic transference, its symbolic function, women working with women, and the historical record of women analysts working with male patients.
Schaverien herself contributes several chapters, including one on what she calls “men who leave too soon” – patients who terminate therapy prematurely rather than face an erotic transference they can’t tolerate. She is a Jungian analyst and Professional Member of the Society of Analytical Psychology in London, and her own earlier book, Desire and the Female Therapist, covers adjacent ground on female therapists specifically. This is the only book on the page centered on gender as the primary analytic lens..