Love in the afternoon: A relational reconsideration of desire and dread in the countertransference

Abstract

The psychoanalytic exploration of the analyst's erotic counter‐transference has remained a subject rarely addressed in open colle‐gial dialogue. This paper addresses this professional reticence as a manifestation of two interwoven resistences. The first, an avoidance of the physiologically based substrata of self and object organization growing out of certain preconceptions derived from a structural‐drive model. And the second, an unwillingness to view the parent/analyst as a full participant in the child's romantic oedi‐pal struggles. An alternative formulation based on a reconfigured, relational model of mental structures is suggested. Here the physical experience of self in relationship to a host of significant internalized others becomes a meaningful organizing component for both the patient and the analyst, one that must be incorporated into the ongoing exploration of transference—countertransference manifestations. Likewise, the unfolding oedipal situation between parent and child, patient and analyst, is viewed from the perspective of a two‐person model within which the shared symbolic participation of both becomes a necessary prerequisite for the kind of resolution that lays the groundwork for mature love. A clinical example in which the analyst felt it necessary to disclose the presence of erotic countertransference is explored from several perspectives.