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Transference Across Gender Lines

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Abstract

Four clinical examples of oedipal-based transference across gender lines are presented with the aim of illustrating (1) its existence, (2) the defenses against its emergence, and (3) the use of the analyst's gender as both an organizer of and resistance to certain transference manifestations. Factors that contribute to the availability for analysis of cross-gender transference are discussed, as are the resistances and other obstacles to its actualization.

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... Meaningful and meaning-generating standing back and looking requires both paternal (masculine) and maternal (feminine) thirdness— autonomous fantasy outside the dyad in transitional containing space. Contemporary gender and relational theory (Aron 1995; Bassin 2002; Benjamin 1995; Dimen 1991; Harris 2005; Raphling and Chused 1988) teaches us that splitting and multiple gendered selves, tolerated and contained, create a basis for new, stronger, and more integrated selves. In transitional space, apparent fragmentation and noise may suddenly reveal, like the fractals of chaos theory, glimpses of patterned regularities that are immediately apparent as having continuity with the order that preceded breakup of the former pattern. ...
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This paper focuses on male patients and their reactions, revealed by dream material, to a female analyst who took over leadership of the group following the death of their male analyst. While the effects of the mourning process are inextricably entwined in these reactions, each man revealed several unconscious fears. These are fears of regression, annihilation by being engulfed and eaten, dependency, castration, and erotic feelings. These fears are commingled. Clinical material supports the view that male patients have profound and sustained erotic transferences to female analysts. An erotic component is clearly present in both the preoedipal and oedipal stages. In addition, paternal transference is found to be as likely as maternal transference, but unlike the observations of other writers, surfaced earlier in the treatment of one male patient. The group setting and the group members helped to stimulate and support male members to express and work through their vulnerable feelings, especially the shame and anticipated humiliation attendant upon expressing erotic feelings to a female therapist.
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Article
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Article
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This paper represents an attempt toward reconciling contemporary changes in psychoanalytic understandings of female development, particularly in respect to separation issues, with their clinical applications to female patients. Psychoanalytic thinking typically has categorized separation conflicts as pre-oedipal, but the authors suggest that these are an integral part of the triangular situation of the girl. The authors argue that an allegiance to erroneous theory and/or individual blind spots have led to the infantilization, pre-oedipalization or cultural stereotyping of females, which constrains the effectiveness of their analyses. The authors present a selected review of the literature on gender-based countertransference biases in both male and female analysts, with reference to female ‘oedipal’ material. Analytic case material of two women is presented which demonstrates how theoretical misperceptions and countertransferences to triangular separation conflicts can produce an impediment to progression in analysis.
Article
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Article
There has been some debate in the literature concerning the ability of the male patient to experience his paternal, and particularly negative oedipal, transference feelings directly toward his female analyst. In this context, the author describes paternal transference manifestations evident throughout her male patient's analysis, and presents detailed process material from the termination phase. At this time the patient's obsessional neurosis was revived in the context of setting a termination date, and transference to the negative oedipal father could be clearly demonstrated. The paper illustrates that even the negative oedipal component of the paternal transference can be experienced directly in the male patient/female analyst, dyad, and interpretation of this material can bring it into clearer focus. The author discusses some possible influences of her sex on the timing and intensity of the material.
Article
The paradoxical thesis is presented that the extraordinary aspect of the analytic experience of a homosexual male analyst and his heterosexual male analysand is that it was ordinary, that the fundamental processes of transference, countertransference, and analysis of defense and resistance were determinative. The unique variations of these processes with this particular patient are explored. The patient entered treatment unaware of the analyst's homosexuality, which he discovered during the analysis. The course of this discovery, its transformations, its defensive uses, its transference meanings, and its fate in the termination are delineated. Through viewing the patient's reactions to the analyst's homosexuality as potential entry points to the transference, the analytic process was enhanced and facilitated.
Article
One consequence of a heightened interest in intersubjectivity in the current psychoanalytic literature has been a relative neglect of the examination of unconscious fantasies. Presenting material from the analysis of three males, each of whom, in childhood and/or adolescence, hid his penis between his legs and looked at himself in a mirror naked, the author demonstrates the importance of attending to both unconscious fantasies and their manifestations within the interactive field of analysis. The first patient is a young child with a gender identity disorder, whose wish to be like his mother was a response to the emotional loss of her during early childhood. The second patient is an adolescent, whose behaviour in front of a mirror was a manifestation of his desire to possess his mother and be her, to humiliate and sadistically control her, and at the same time, to experience the masochistic sexual gratification of being a seemingly helpless victim. The third patient, a 48-year-old male, came to analysis filled with suicidal impulses and self-hatred related to homosexual impulses. His repeated examination of himself in a mirror, with penis hidden, reflected severe castration anxiety, related to an ambivalent relationship with an angry mother and a longing for attention from an unavailable father. The article closes with a description of the similarities and differences in the dynamics of these three males as well as a discussion of the meaning of similar behaviour in other males seen in consultation.
Article
This questionnaire study was designed to confirm and further explore an earlier finding of a gender difference in post-termination patient-analyst contact, as well as to assess whether practices regarding post-termination contact have changed in the five-year interval since the first study. The hypothesis that women analysts are more likely to have post-termination contact with their analysands than men analysts was confirmed by the present study. Analysts who report thinking frequently about their most significant analyst are contacted by a much larger proportion of prior patients than those who rarely think about their analyst. Further, women analysts are more likely to feel they benefited from the analysis they consider their most significant analysis, and to feel positively about that analyst. In 1994, analysts were much more accepting of and more likely to propose post-termination contact than in 1989. What the analyst reports he/she says to the patient is associated with the likelihood of such contact.
Article
This paper represents an attempt toward reconciling contemporary changes in psychoanalytic understandings of female development, particularly in respect to separation issues, with their clinical applications to female patients. Psychoanalytic thinking typically has categorized separation conflicts as pre-oedipal, but the authors suggest that these are an integral part of the triangular situation of the girl. The authors argue that an allegiance to erroneous theory and/or individual blind spots have led to the infantilization, pre-oedipalization or cultural stereotyping of females, which constrains the effectiveness of their analyses. The authors present a selected review of the literature on gender-based countertransference biases in both male and female analysts, with reference to female 'oedipal' material. Analytic case material of two women is presented which demonstrates how theoretical misperceptions and countertransferences to triangular separation conflicts can produce an impediment to progression in analysis.
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Let me summarize. I distinguish between two major different relationships between transference and resistance. One is resistance to awareness of the transference and the other is resistance to resolution of the transference. I argue that the bulk of the analytic work should take place in the transference in the here and now. I detailed Freud's view that the transference should be encouraged to expand within the analytic situation. I suggested that the main technique for doing so, in addition to the analytic setup itself, is the interpretation of resistance to the awareness of transference by searching for the allusions to the transference in the associations not manifestly about the transference; that in making such interpretations one is guided by the connection to the actual analytic situation which every transference includes; that the major work in resolving the transference takes place in the here and now, both by way of examining the relation between the transference and the actuality of the analytic situation from which it takes its point of departure and the new experience which the analysis of the transference inevitably includes; and that, while genetic transference interpretations play a role in resolving the transference, genetic material is likely to appear spontaneously and with relative ease after the resistances have been overcome in the transference in the here and now. Working through remains important, and it, too, takes place primarily in the transference in the here and now.
Article
The clinical work in this paper is focused on the analysis of the negative oedipal phase of a male patient with a female analyst. Determinants of this phase are discussed. Theoretical questions are raised and propositions advanced. Transference phenomena are differentiated from the transference neurosis and the types of transferences formed according to the sex of the analyst are discussed. It is proposed that patients develop maternal transferences to analysts of both sexes, but that such transferences are limited to pre-oedipal phases for patients with male analysts. During the analysis of the oedipal phase, both positive and negative, the patient's transference is to the analyst according to the analyst's sex. A true paternal transference neurosis to a female analyst ordinarily does not occur.
Article
The analyses of two children and one adolescent were presented to illustrate the concept that the neutrality of the analyst can be used not only to (a) establish a working, analyzing, and observing alliance, (b) permit the development, recognition, and working through of the transference neurosis, but also to (c) develop a sense of autonomy and self-esteem which had been contaminated by the neediness and lack of true empathy of the primary objects during the practicing and rapprochement phases of separation-individuation. For the patients discussed above, many ego functions which should have had a degree of secondary autonomy were either inhibited, enmeshed in conflict, or experienced as nongenuine, part of a "false self." It was as if the experience with the neutral analyst permitted an "autonomous practicing" that had not been possible during the period of separation-individuation.
Article
Research studies about the relevance of therapist gender to assessment, duration of treatment, and satisfaction with treatment or its outcome provide no clear, replicable results salient to decision making. Psychoanalytic and other clinical writings deal with the impact of clinician gender on the course or outcome of psychotherapy. Effects appear to depend on many factors, including the type and goal of psychotherapy, the patient's developmental level, the early relationship with parents, and the nature of object relationships and specific conflictual areas, as well as the therapist' sensitivity and value system regarding gender issues. No specific conclusions as to optimal patient-therapist matches on the basis of therapist sex appear warranted.
Article
Empathy is usually regarded as an irreducible inborn capacity, operative from birth, for knowing the inner experience of another person without necessarily perceiving cues from that person about his thoughts or feelings. Merging of the type characteristic of early infant-mother symbiosis has often been considered the origin and basic component of empathy. However, merging is an illusory experience which cannot function as an active mechanism in the perceptual process, and the psychological structures needed for certain kinds of empathy do not commence development until eighteen months of age. The mechanism of empathy has also been ascribed to vaguely defined variants of identification. This is not a settled issue, but the idea is not compatible with a recent rigorous effort to define identification. The author offers a different theory of empathy, according to which empathy is a capacity that evolves with neuropsychological maturation and interpersonal interactions in the course of individual development. Empathy depends on sensory perception of behavioral cues from the object about his inner state. The empathizer compares these behavioral cues with one or more kinds of referent in this own mind which could be expressed by similar behavior. He then infers that the inner experience of the object qualitatively matches that associated with his referent. Limitations in the accuracy and scope of empathy are threefold: patients may limit or distort the expression of behavioral cues about their state of mind; referents available in the mind of the empathizer may be inadequate; and the inferential process is inherently uncertain. As a result, knowledge of another person's thoughts and feelings which can be acquired through empathy is limited. The theoretical understanding of empathy offered in this paper implies ways for improving empathic accuracy, especially by means of applying two or more kinds of referents to the same set of perceived cues.
Article
The author tried to illustrate through selected case material that there is a range of circumstances in which the gender of the analyst becomes important in a young child's evolving relationship with the analyst. Significant among these are nontransference configurations, such as the defensive use of the analyst as a figure for displacement of conflicts from primary objects, or in the use of the analyst in achieving a new previously untraversed developmental step. She also briefly discussed instances in which the gender of the child appears to have some influence on the developing countertransference, especially in relation to preoedipal manifestations in young girls and women. With regard to evolving transference manifestations, she indicated that the use of gender is representative of particular qualities of the analyst which are given meaning by the patient and subsequently utilized in the transference. She also tried to demonstrate that the ways in which the gender of the analyst becomes important in transference or transference-related areas reflect particular conflicts and developmental phases with which the child is involved. The gender of the analyst can provide possible foci for resistance to transference development, serve to exaggerate a transference resistance, and work for the enhancement or attenuation of particular aspects of transference manifestations.
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