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The Times We Sizzle, and the Times We Sigh: The Multiple Erotics of Arousal, Anticipation, and Release
Abstract
This paper explores the perspective that an optimal degree of sexual frustration is an absolutely necessary and irreducible dimension of sexual excitement and pleasure. The pleasure, in fact, is predicated on actual enjoyment of the frustration, of being able to tolerate mounting bodily arousal, excitement, and tension without any guarantee of immediate satisfaction and release. The author explores the particular object relational implications of this unique aspect of sexual experience, elaborating a model that suggests two different interacting but separate subsystems of erotic fantasy, in interaction with very different self/ other configurations. The first of these self/other organizations is organized and defined by moments of sexual arousal and yearning, whereas the second occurs around those defined by satisfaction, pleasure, and release. An extended clinical example is provided.
... -838our sexual shame is culturally contextualized. Elise (2002Elise ( , 2008 and Davies (2006) have recently elaborated on the relationship between sexuality and shame, and we have much to learn from others about the overlap between "sexuality," "desire," "passion," "lust," and the claiming of feminine subjectivity (see Gilligan, 1982 ). Yet when we speak of desire, we are speaking of something that transcends the physical-something that goes beyond even the hunger for sex. ...
... On the theme of the embodiment of sexual desire, Elise argues the inherent paradox that in her patient's associations, her sexuality was projected outside herself in the form of this sexy "man from some faraway country" (this issue, p. 797). She demonstrates how the patient needed to see her claim ownership of her own sexual power over time and thereby complete her own inner schema of "erotic intersubjectivity" (Davies, 2006). By so doing, Elise would provide the identificatory template of a sexually agentic maternal figure that the patient sorely needed. ...
Using metaphoric dance imagery, the author playfully engages the theme of inhibition of desire through an audio-visual-kinetic listening style. She explores potential alternative self-states and dissociated self-other configurations between patient and analyst in the form of multiple dance “couplings.” The analyst's role in the awakening or inhibiting of his or her patient's sexual desire and personal agency is discussed, drawing on potential transference–countertransference configurations and the influence of shame, disempowerment, and stereotypes of gender and race on the formation of sexual identity. How does each patient call for her analyst to change? Will eroticism, dissociated rage, victimization, or betrayal find expression in Amanda's treatment once Slavin renounces his position of idealized holder of knowledge? How does Elise's exploration of the contrast between the female analyst's conventionally desexualized “analytic costume” and her patient's more colorful hyperbolic imagery of her sexuality, further the pursuit of liberation from culturally contextualized shame and devaluation of female sexuality? The author proposes a model of self-acceptance on the part of the analyst of the embodiment of her own fluctuations in sexual desire, along with openness to transference explorations, where relevant, about her own body.
... Read, personal communication, May 2015). Davies (2006) described two separate subsystems of erotic fantasy: experiences of sexual arousal and yearning and satisfaction, pleasure, and release. She suggested that each state is unaware of and segregated from the other. ...
... Thus, dissociated self-aspects of one partner create a mutual narrowing of the couple's boundaries, as if both unconsciously "agree" to keep some aspects outside of the mutual arena. Another example of this is when trauma and dissociation disrupt the capacity to integrate selfother erotic configurations, those of "good exciting object" and "bad exciting object" (Davies, 2007) in one of the partners. This process might happen unconsciously and affect the interpersonal relationship, disabling the natural and gradual metabolization of lustful/shameful aspects of sexuality in the couple's life. ...
This paper introduces the concept of "dissociative collusion" as a helpful theoretical and clinical tool for understanding and working with clients with histories of trauma in couple therapy. The paper describes ways to diagnose and treat dissociative collusion based on the integration of an object relations approach, a relational approach, and a narrative approach. Dissociative collusion, a unique version of the well-documented "couple collusion," describes relational unconscious dynamics where split-off aspects of one or both partners are mutually dissociated in a complementary fashion that becomes a part of the shared unconscious and is reenacted in destructive ways. The dissociative collusion concept is especially relevant to couple therapists who work with clients with histories of trauma, who frequently use dissociation as a primary defense mechanism. We suggest that the challenge and goal for couple therapy with this population are to help them reconnect and better oscillate between dissociated self-other configurations. A case of couple therapy of a wife who had been a victim of childhood sexual abuse and her husband who displayed frequent use of dissociative defenses is presented.
© 2020 Family Process Institute.
... Read, personal communication, May 2015). Davies (2006) described two separate subsystems of erotic fantasy: experiences of sexual arousal and yearning and satisfaction, pleasure, and release. She suggested that each state is unaware of and segregated from the other. ...
The author considers the nature of erotic processes through the lens of transference/countertransference-focused psychotherapy, with particular emphasis on accounting for both old and cocreated, new self-other configurations. He also examines the defensive and transformational potential of the erotic within therapy. The need to develop and maintain a therapeutic frame and boundaries is examined, and the difficulty that erotic/sexual processes and awareness in the therapy pose in the countertransference is explored. The risk of boundary violations is highlighted.
Contemporary theorists believe that each expert's discourse has meaning only in the context of an interpretive community. For therapists, the analytic community serves this purpose, helping them to construct their patients’ experiences and to hold inherent intersubjective paradoxes; the community provides them with a vantage point from which they learn to acknowledge, tolerate, and accept these paradoxes. I will examine the role of this vantage point in holding one of the central paradoxes for therapists: the uniqueness of each therapeutic relationship which urges them to ‘reinvent psychoanalysis’ with each patient, and its similarity to other therapeutic relationships which urges them to draw on the analytic community's theoretical schemas. I will suggest that supervisors help their supervisees in this internal struggle by representing the analytic community's vantage point and by holding a parallel paradox: the uniqueness of each supervisory relationship, which urges them to ‘reinvent’ the theory of supervision for each supervisee, and its similarity to other supervisory relationships, which urges them to draw on the analytic community's theoretical supervisory schemas. Reasonably, the supervisors’ capacity to hold these paradoxes is gradually internalized by their supervisees, facilitating their growth as therapists.
Our capacity to give or withhold consent is intrinsically related to our felt sense of agency, and yet complexity theory and the social-constructivist ideas that inform new developments in relational psychoanalysis trouble and unsettle reified definitions of consent. This article explores the phenomenological experience of yes-saying and no-saying in psychoanalytic treatment. What does it mean, for example, to be a choosing subject who isn’t fully conscious, autonomous, and agentic? How are our definitions of consent altered if we make room for thinking about individuals as composed of multiple self-states or dissociatively organized? Furthermore, if all analyses begin with a sense of “hope and dread,” in Mitchell’s terms, and are marked by (as Butler wrote) “ambivalence and an abiding sense of anxiety,” then all analyses begin in a place between yes and no. This has implications for how analysts think about the patient’s explicit and unspoken “no’s” and suggests that perhaps implicit in our concept of empathic attunement is the idea of psychoanalytic seduction. “If you can think yourself appropriately into the inner life of another person,” as Kohut somewhat daringly proposed, “then you can use this knowledge for your own [therapeutic] purposes.” Borrowing from sexual scenarios and clinical vignettes to illuminate some undertheorized areas in psychoanalytic theory and practice, this article posits that there are significant corollaries between sexual seduction and what happens in any given analysis.
What role does ethics play in the practice of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy?
For most of its history, psychoanalysis has viewed ethics as a "side issue" in clinical work—occasionally relevant, but not central to therapeutic action. In Psychoanalysis as an Ethical Process, Robert Drozek highlights the foundational importance of ethical experience in the therapeutic relationship, as well as the role that ethical commitments have played in inspiring what has been called the "relational turn" in psychoanalysis.
Using vivid clinical examples from the treatment of patients with severe personality disorders, Drozek sketches out an ethically-grounded vision of analytic process, wherein analyst and patient are engaged in the co-construction of an intersubjective space that is progressively more consistent with their intrinsic worth as human beings. Psychoanalysis can thus be seen as a unique vehicle for therapeutic and ethical change, leading to a dramatic expansion of agency, altruism, and self-esteem for both participants. By bringing our analytic theories into closer contact with our ethical experiences as human beings, we can connect more fully with the fundamental humanity that unites us with our patients, and that serves as the basis for deep and lasting therapeutic change.
This book will be of interest to psychotherapists and psychoanalysts, as well as scholars in ethical theory and philosophy.
This paper speculates that Freud’s use of cocaine during the formative years of his theorizing shaped a particular conception of the nature of desire. One can draw correspondences between the phenomenology of cocaine intoxication and certain aspects of Freud’s ideas about desire: desire as appetitive, solipsistic, focused on discharge, defined by a quality of “drivenness,” subordinating of pleasure. Although relational reconsiderations have expanded our conception of desire, many contemporary people remain stringently Freudian in our experience of desire, as I use some clinical material to substantiate. In this sense we are all heirs to Freud’s cocaine consciousness.
In an imaginative leap, I link the wide cultural currency attained by psychoanalysis to its consilience with the logic of a coincident expanding capitalist economy—a mode of political economy that has now brought us to the brink of environmental destruction. I conclude that the future of civilization will depend on our ability to find other ways to live our desire.
Chapter 10: “Working Through and Working On” takes an extended look at two clinical moments to talk about the actual practice of integrative psychotherapy. Recognition of patterns and continuity of experience are discussed. In this chapter, readers have an opportunity to see how the different elements in the preceding chapters can be brought into a practice on a regular and smoothly integrated basis. Based on research and clinical examples, the chapter shows clinicians how they might integrate their own work. The concepts of detailed inquiry and small moments of change are re-visited and considered extensively in the context of clinical material.
Chapter 7: “An Integrative Approach to Therapeutic Relationships” addresses the question of therapeutic relationships from different perspectives. Data shows that a relationship between therapist and client can be a key factor in therapeutic outcome, no matter what type of therapy a clinician is practicing. This chapter will look at this material to discuss what types of relationships lead to change in clients with different diagnoses and presenting problems. Bringing together numerous theories, evidence from research, and clinical material, this chapter addresses the important and often confusing question of whether it will be more helpful to encourage a client talk about the therapeutic relationship or to allow it unfold, undiscussed, as a background presence. Further discussion of the key concepts of “detailed inquiry” and “small steps” is presented in this chapter.
Chapter 2: “Contemporary Psychodynamic Models” introduces psychodynamic theory as a tool for understanding and making meaning out of what lies behind some of a client’s behavior and experience. To some extent, such meaning-making is about articulating and mirroring a client’s personal story, or narrative. Research, evidence and clinical examples show how an integrative perspective provides flexibility of approach that makes understanding such meaning useful in almost any context. A psychodynamic approach does not necessarily mean offering insight as a therapeutic intervention. Using the concepts of detailed inquiry and small steps, the chapter helps clinicians think about what lies behind some of the thoughts, feelings, behaviors and symptoms that may not be immediately clear either to a person experiencing them or to an observer. Understanding unspoken, unarticulated or unconscious meaning can help a therapist determine what will be the best therapeutic approach to take.
A psychoanalyst may function as an enlivening object, to awaken the growth of relatedness in patients whose curtailed object relations confine them to primitive forms of engagement. The model is informed by the insights of the child psychoanalytic psychotherapist Anne Alvarez in her treatment of disturbed youth. The idea of the analyst in an enlivening role is viewed within a contemporary context of expanded perspectives on the analyst's role and evolving notions of therapeutic action.
In this discussion I address the multidimensionality embedded within the oedipal phase of development and contend that the elaboration and working through of unrequited oedipal longing within the transference-countertransference matrix is one of the most profound gifts of an analysis. The childs confrontation with thwarted desire (generationally) for either parent is central to the development of the mind, the personality, and ones erotic life. I also argue that the experience of oedipal exclusion becomes not solely a response to a generational boundary but to a gender boundary discouraging same-sex love. I speak for retaining a conceptualization of an oedipal complex without losing any of the complexity of individual experience. In describing our oedipal lineages for erotic life as resting upon an interwoven layering of maternal and paternal oedipal desires, my aim is to continue a project to rehabilitate the oedipal concept from heteronormative presumptions and from being (mis)understood in a reductive manner that alienates rather than engages.
When encounters with homophobia are so strongly borne throughout one's existence, the cultural, social, and institutional interdictions against one's very being become internalized, and the process of dehumanization continues from within. This article is built on the premise that the trauma surrounding the individual's early sense of foreignness necessitates a process of dissociation in which the segregation of self-states, along with shame and guilt, perpetuate internalized stigma and sever empathic connections. Using Bromberg's (1996) concept of dissociation, an extended clinical example is provided to illustrate the way in which my patient's dissociative switch in self-states led to a dissociated homophobic reaction in his gay therapist, and how empathy resulted from the discovery of shame-filled affective states arising out of the intersubjective experience of shame and homophobia in the clinical situation
This paper proposes a contemporary rendering of the Oedipus Complex as key to understanding an individual’s unique erotic signature. Conceived in terms of its complexity as opposed to a fixed and rigid complex and ridded of its hetereonormative biases, Oedipal complexity becomes a royal road to unlocking erotic inhibitions and potentiating sensual expansiveness. The theory is rooted in a multiple self state model of mind with an emphasis on conflicting systems of early internalized object relations. Two extended clinical examples are offered in an attempt to further explicate this point of view.
Contemporary psychoanalysis considers itself to be a discipline fundamentally concerned with meaning and meaning-making processes. Ed Tronick’s research provides scientific support for the theoretical position that meaning making is a central process in psychological development and in mental health/illness. His work collaborating with psychoanalysts has made major contributions to the psychoanalytic literature on therapeutic action, with a special emphasis on the means by which implicit meanings are activated and modified in analytic treatment—the something more than interpretation. This article is about a different something more, the even more that psychoanalytic theory and technique can evolve through further incorporating Tronick’s important findings. Tronick’s Dyadic Expansion of Consciousness Model will be briefly reviewed—emphasizing his conceptualization of meanings as being composed of multiple commingling layers (biological, psychological, relational, and social) coming together in a nonlinear “messy” mixture of mutually influencing (both bottom-up and top-down) currents. This multilayered model of meaning opens up the reconsideration of an exciting array of technical options—traditionally considered nonanalytic—to be reunderstood as truly psychoanalytic in that they address one or more of the implicit or explicit levels of meaning that a patient makes of his or her self and world. Examples of these interventions include parent work, work with teachers and schools, as well as interventions adapted from other disciplines such as Occupational Therapy. These technical possibilities are illustrated using case material from the psychoanalytic treatment of a nine-year-old boy.
Eating disorders are no longer considered isolated or single symptom disorders. Numerous authors have noted difficulties categorizing and treating these “refractory” disorders, and over the past three decades the number of techniques, ideas, and approaches available to address these issues has expanded exponentially. While this provides therapists with a wide range of possible interventions, it also leaves open the question of how to choose from this wide field of possibilities. In this discussion I offer some ideas about bringing together disparate, even contradictory, therapeutic ideas and techniques into a relatively cohesive frame which will enhance the work of any therapist with clients with eating disorders.
This essay reviews and discusses a panel of papers on the topic of transgender. The five papers under discussion—theoretical, clinical, and an interview—constitute a paradigm changing view of transgender identifications and indeed gender identity more generally. The discussion focuses on thinking about transgender phenomena in cultural context, as a spectrum of positions and modes of being, as presenting issues of development, and as deep instances of psychic pain and psychic exhilaration. The interface of cultural theory and psychoanalytic theory is considered. Transgender experiences in analyst or analysand will entail rethinking questions of embodiment, of social construction, of trauma, and of family transmissions of meaning. Implications for psychoanalytic thinking and work about identity and sexuality, developed in all the papers in this fascinating panel, are considered.
This paper explores certain subjective dimensions of sexuality by proposing that erotic experience is predicated on an experience of otherness within the self. I suggest that the ability to lust where one loves is contingent on the capacity to bring this otherness of self forward in the context of attachment. The dampening or deadening of desire in long-term relationships may be understood, counterintuitively, not as a failure of the integration of lust with love but as a breakdown of the normative dissociative processes on which the emergence of lust depends. I theorize that the otherness of lustful states of mind emerges via the impact and dynamic interplay of social regulatory intrusions on identity formation. This understanding helps explain both the psychic tensions and potential sources of breakdown present in combining lust with love.
Tentative pour preciser le concept de reddition, etude de ses relations ou masochismes et a la soumission. Le masochisme en tant que perversion de la reddition le sadisme en tant que perversion de l'usage de l'objet (Winnicott). Quelques applications possibles du concept de reddition
Can Love Last? The Fate of Romance Over Time by Stephen A. Mitchell (New York, NY: W.W. Norton, 2002, 224 pp.)In Can Love Last, Stephen Mitchell deconstructed the resistances—personal, metapsychological, and cultural—to sustaining vibrant and intimate sexual relationships over the long haul. This discussion is concerned with the way in which Mitchell's emphasis on risk shortchanged the importance of safety in long-term romantic passion. By showing how security and dependency needs can fuel rather than dampen eros, the author proposes an alternative thesis.
Recent contributions to the psychoanalytic literature suggest that the classical focus on psychosexuaiity has been lost. This charge is both wrong and right. After briefly surveying the evolution of psychoanalytic thinking on sexuality and reviewing the concept of libido, this essay retrieves the word Lust from the footnotes to which Freud consigned it and remodels it into a new idea. The proposition is put forth that a postclassical theory of sex compatible with contemporary clinical and theoretical practice can emerge once sexuality is rethought in the ambiguous, potential space between Lust and libido.
In Can Love Last, Stephen Mitchell deconstructed the resistances personal, metapsychological, and culturalto sustaining vibrant and intimate sexual relationships over the long haul. This discussion is concerned with the way in which Mitchells emphasis on risk shortchanged the importance of safety in long-term romantic passion. By showing how security and dependency needs can fuel rather than dampen eros, the author proposes an alternative thesis.
The author, reconsidering the concept of the Oedipus complex, attempts to reestablish its significance as a major developmental milestone, while at the same time disentangling it from any linear assumptions regarding sexual orientation or object choice. A postoedipal phase of development is suggested in which the emphasis on romantic perfection and idealization of the love object, endemic to oedipal processes, is transformed and intimacy and mutual psychic and emotional interpenetrability become the defining features. Oedipal and postoedipal forms of romantic relatedness are always viewed as functioning dialectically, in mutually enriching and invigorating synergy. Specific transferencecountertransference manifestations of the transition from primarily oedipal to primarily postoedipal forms of engagement are considered, with special attention given to the notion of oedipal victors and oedipal losers. Aspects of erotic masochism related to this transitional phase of development are also discussed. A lengthy case example of an erotic impasse between a female analyst and a female patient is offered as an illustration of some of these concepts.
This paper argues that some forms of sadomasochistic fantasy and enactments can represent a developmental and therapeutic advance for some patients. Playful fantasies of dominance and submission, when enacted, function to reassure the patient that the other can survive the full expression and power of his or her sexual desire. Sadomasochistic scenarios can mitigate guilt and worry and free the patient for an experience of sexual ruthlessness. The apparent differences in the manifest roles of the man and woman in this situation are belied in a paradoxical way by underlying commonalities. A woman can use her consensually scripted domination as a reassurance that the man can withstand the full force of her excitement, and the man can experience his partner's excitement in submission as a condition of safety for the consolidation of his phallic strength. Two clinical examples illustrate these paradoxes and the affirmative dimension of certain kinds of sadomasochistic play. The suggestion is made that blanket critiques of sadomasochism as either perversion or misogyny are misguided and potentially repressive.
In this article I explore the concept of a postoedipal adult sexuality and its role in the erotic transference‐countertransference processes seen in psychoanalytic treatment. This concept challenges the fundamental assumption that, whenever erotic feelings enter the psychoanalytic space, the analyst always stands in the role of the oedipal parent. It suggests that clinical choices made from within an oedipal model often fail to recognize certain significant developmental changes. An extended clinical example is provided.
The author examines the implications for the classic theory of repression of his contention that the libido is essentially oriented toward objects rather than toward gratification. The clue to the nature of the repressed lies in the relationship of the ego to bad internalized objects. The threatened or actual release of these bad objects gives rise to the patient's symptoms and to his desire for treatment. This creates a problem for the therapist, since the analytic technique promotes a release of bad objects from the unconscious. The release is therapeutic, however, because it is controlled by the analyst and safeguarded by the security imparted by the transference situation. The psychoneuroses of war have as their most distinctive feature separation anxiety. That is, the patient has an infantile dependence on his accustomed objects, which is not satisfied under military conditions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
In this paper I examine the interplay of love and aggression in a couple's emotional relationship. I explore the activation of dominant repressed or dissociated object relations with the parental figures, and the unconscious collusion of both partners to enact these past relationships in the present. I then examine the couple's relationship as determined by differences in male and female development, as well as the counterpart of these differences-unconscious moves toward “twinship” and complementarity.
Unresolved oedipal conflicts are explored as a major cause of invasion of the couple's sexual boundaries, and a vehicle for the expression of dissociated aggression from many sources. Perversity-the “recruitment of love at the service of aggression”—as a threat to the basic fabric of a couple's love life is one alternative to the normal channels for elaboration of aggression in their relationship. Protective functions of the couple's interaction with their social network are examined in the context of their elaborating and integrating aggression with love.
Sexual experience has an "otherness" about it that distinguishes it from daily, habitual modes of experiencing and relating. This paper attempts to use Freud's and Laplanche's theories of primal seduction by the mother, who sends an "enigmatic signifier" or message of her sexuality to the child whom she nurtures. A tension arc is created between bodily sensations and the enigmatic other carrying over into adult life and constituting a bedrock for the sense of enigma and unfathomableness and the sense of the profound revelation that sometimes accompanies sexual experience. The author articulates links with transference and countertransference forms and offers new possibilities of understanding some clinical phenomena.
The author explores aspects of sexual experiencing as they emerge in the course of development, especially as structured between parents and children. Is a certain mode of "innocent" sexual relating an important outcome of the developmental process, and does this mode have a place in the analytic process? The author suggests that the restoration of a capacity for sexual experiencing that is relatively free of convoluted developmental legacies may represent an important achievement in analytic work; and that the analyst's participation in this process, using his or her own capacity for "innocent" sexual responsiveness, may be essential to this outcome.
Like Subjects, Love Objects: Essays on Recognition and Sexual Difference
- J Benjamin
Benjamin, J. (1995), Like Subjects, Love Objects: Essays on Recognition and Sexual Difference. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
The Language of Perversion and the Language of Love Adaptive sadomasochism and psychological growth
- S Bach
Bach, S. (1994), The Language of Perversion and the Language of Love. Northvale, NJ: Aronson. Bader, M. J. (1993), Adaptive sadomasochism and psychological growth. Psychoanal. Dial., 3:279–300.
Presented to the International Association of Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy. Between lust and libido: The ewww factor in psychoanalysis
- M Dimen