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Abstract
There are certain analytic axioms that influence psychoanalytic treatment. One is the notion that only women can understand other women and in particular that only women should analyze lesbians. Feminist influence has left us with the notion that differences as well as sameness exist between all patients and all analysts and these must be appreciated without pathologizing. In the past decade, there has been escalating attention paid by relational psychoanalysts to the development and clinical implications of the erotic transference/countertrans-ference in psychoanalytic treatment. This paper discusses specific ho-moerotic transference/countertransference issues which arise between female patients and a female analyst. It presents clinical material on the erotic transferences of three female patients, one who identifies as bisexual, another who identifies as heterosexual, and the third who identifies as lesbian. The focus of this paper, however, will be on the erotic countertransference since it is in the erotic countertransference arena that the erotic transference often gets bogged down or eliminated.