Braving the erotic field in the treatment of adolescents^*

* This paper will be published as a chapter in the author’s new book Analytic Engagements with Adolescents: Sex, Gender and Subversion (Brady, 2018, in press).

Abstract

The psychoanalytic literature on erotic transference and countertransference in adolescence is notably sparse, despite the centrality of the developing sexual body/mind. Erotic feelings in the consulting room with an adolescent can feel taboo, causing the analyst to avoid the immediacy of these feelings. Excessive timidity on the part of the analyst can limit the growth of the capacity for containment of sexual feelings and yield what I term ‘erotic insufficiency’ in our work with adolescents. I offer clinical material from a period of erotic transference and countertransference with a 12-year-old boy to consider these ideas. Further, I suggest that the very terms ‘erotic transference’ and ‘erotic countertransference’ can feel defensively remote and antiseptic. I suggest that ‘erotic field’ better captures the subtle, nuanced interplay of feelings.

Keywords:

• Adolescence
• erotic transference
• erotic countertransference
• erotic insufficiency
• erotic field
• puberty

Notes

* This paper will be published as a chapter in the author’s new book Analytic Engagements with Adolescents: Sex, Gender and Subversion (Brady, 2018, in press).

1. I searched Pep-Web and found 1,785 references for ‘erotic transference’ 592 references for ‘erotic countertransference’, 15 references for ‘erotic transference, adolescence’ and only 3 references for ‘erotic countertransference, adolescence’. For a recent welcome exception see Journal of Child Psychotherapy, 2017, Volume 43(1), in which the first three papers consider erotic transference within adolescent treatments. The editors comment that ‘the literature on the topic has historically been somewhat slender’ (Stratton & Russell, 2017).

2. For an exception to this generalisation see Alvarez’s description of ‘perverse sexuality’ (Alvarez, 2012, p. 122) in a seven-year-old child.

3. It would be interesting to study the responses of adolescents to the use of the couch. In my experience some adolescents find the use of the couch sexually stimulating and some find it a refuge that helps them to talk about sexual feelings without having to look at the analyst, or either may be true at different times.

4. Person’s (1985) paper on erotic transference in adults contends that male patients are more resistant to the awareness of the erotic transference and female patients are more resistant to the resolution of erotic transference in the cross-gendered treatments she studied. It would be interesting to study this question in adolescent treatments. In adolescence, particularly at puberty, the gender of the pair may matter more than at any other age.

5. In contrast to a classical view of countertransference as a hindrance, espoused by Reich (1951).

6. It is interesting to note the different but perhaps related issues that led this teen and his mother to accept a recommendation for more intensive work. Frank’s acceptance of the recommendation followed his recognition of newfound vigour as he began to use his mind to separate himself from his mother’s depression. His mother’s not unrealistic concern that Frank would get in trouble with his risk-taking friends involved the dangers of separation.

7. Atkinson and Gabbard (1995) note that voyeuristic looking precedes genital sexuality in the ordinary sexual development of boys. Lena comments on a 16-year-old boy’s gaze ‘to penetrate into my eyes or to stare at my body. I felt very uncomfortable, embarrassed, intruded upon, at times repulsed by him’ (Lena, 2017, p. 47). The intrusive quality of that boy’s gaze was later understood as related to intrusion he had suffered. Frank’s gaze seemed more as Atkinson and Gabbard describe.

8. See Laufer (1968, p. 115) re masturbation and masturbation fantasies in adolescence as ‘trial actio’ sometimes leading to developmental progression and sometimes to deadlock. My emphasis here is on the emergence of erotic feelings within the analytic work.

9. It is noteworthy that in the few articles I could find on erotic transference with adolescents, supervision was frequently mentioned: e.g. Lena: ‘Supervision represented a vital ‘third’ that enabled me to think about the dangers of focusing only on the maternal and infantile aspects while avoiding talking about sexuality …’ (Lena, 2017, p. 53).

10. Clearly Elise recognises that ‘the analyst’s creative energies are not to be a substitute for the absence of such energies in the patient; rather, they are best seen as an enlivening contribution to the analytic encounter, even if, paradoxically, they are used to narrate deadness and devitalization’ (Elise, 2017, p. 51).

11. A. Freud (1958) thought that adolescents separating from their objects were not able to sufficiently ‘transfer’ or attach to a new object, which made them difficult or impossible to treat. She felt that help might instead be aimed at their parents. Though many analysts did not share her view, it did seem to have a chilling effect on attitudes toward the intensive treatment of adolescents. A rare panel discussion at the American Psychoanalytic Association on analysis of adolescents, summarised by Sklansky, concluded ‘few contemporary adolescent patients are analyzable… once in analysis a variety of parameters of technique far beyond those used in the classical analysis of adults are necessary’ (Sklansky,1972, p. 134). The one dissenting panellist was Adatto, who commented that certain adolescents with ‘sufficient ego capacities and transference readiness can catapult an analysis into intensive productive work, rarely observed in adults’ (Sklansky,1972, p. 138). More recent literature has emerged which differs from this concern regarding adolescent analysability (Laufer,1997; Paz & Olmoz de Paz, 1992).