romantic feelings toward therapist

July 12, 2021

Erotic Transference and the Fantasy Lives of Therapists

My father, a man of uncommon decency, kept an issue of Playboy Magazine in the closet he used for his overcoats. I discovered this item while snooping around the house, not expecting that. The featured model was Jayne Mansfield.

This happened in the late 1950s, long before the unending pornographic video flood undercut the thrill of “dirty photos.” US citizens of the time lived in a post-Victorian, white man’s dream world, just prior to birth control pills and the sexual revolution. Then they continued in a non-Victorian, more sexualized version of the same thing.

I was old enough to fathom why a man might be interested in perusing color pictures of the famous blond beauty in all her air-brushed nakedness. I put the magazine back as dad left it, never confessed my discovery, and didn’t try to interrogate.

If my sire had fantasies despite sleeping next to the woman of his dreams every night, I imagined everyone did.

Therapists do, too.

I notice beautiful women still and didn’t close my eyes when they entered the office for psychotherapy. Another psychologist mentioned such beauties energized him, helped him focus his attention on “the person” behind the attractive face and form.

Hmm.

This man maintained an active sex life, by the way. To my knowledge, he didn’t engage in affairs with his patients but acquired a reputation for more than a few of the extramarital variety at one of the hospitals where we both practiced.

Counselors are not eunuchs. Acquiring a license to practice doesn’t require neutering.

We “notice,” and some few do more than take in the visual, feminine glories of the natural world despite ethical codes forbidding the mix of romantic engagement with those who come with personal problems.

Intimacy with a therapist is never the solution to those problems, though some professionals persuade themselves it is a different manner of “helping.” In case you haven’t realized it yet, we homo sapiens can convince ourselves of anything, justifying murder, robbing our kids of their credit cards, and more.

I can’t tell you I never fantasized about the women I treated. I don’t recall doing so, however. But then, we don’t remember every dark night dream of body and soul, do we?

Did I have those fantasies or not? I still can’t be certain. Most of the time, I compartmentalized or separated home from work. What fantasies I do recollect didn’t derive from doctor-patient interaction.

I never overstepped professional limits, despite invitations offered in straightforward confessions of love from female clients. These included one lovely who brought a kit of sex toys and a variety of condoms to a session and proceeded to unload them on my desk.

The topic of sexual transference continues to pull in readers to my blog, as well as the writing of others. The humans alive today, every one of us, are here because the drive to procreate remains in the DNA passed to us and through us.

I heard females, a limited number, mention our sessions stimulated their lubrication.

I recall another dear person I referred to a different psychologist because we couldn’t resolve and move beyond her transference, aka, her obsessive wish to be my lover.

In our final meeting, she asked for a parting hug. Weeks before, she presented a pencil drawing of me holding her. Since I couldn’t predict how far she might take an embrace, I refused. Anger followed.

Another woman, paradoxically, could not have been further from capturing my interest. She did refer to her satisfying sex life with her husband, but this wasn’t what prompted her to consult me. Nor was the brief report remarkable.

I found nothing stimulating in her intellect, personality, appearance, or her way of walking or moving, speaking or smiling. She didn’t flirt and didn’t wear revealing clothing. I guess the lady was in her 40s or early 50s.

And yet, I felt drawn to her. By the process of elimination, I can only conclude she produced an oversupply of pheromones.

My boundaries and respect for those who requested guidance stopped me from considering the pursuit of touch outside those limitations, as did my love for my wife and a set of clear principles. I never needed to think about potential public humiliation, financial ruin, and vocational catastrophe.

None of this makes me a saint, in case you wondered. If you can find one, let me know.

But, I heard a few stories from men who did destroy their lives and those of their victims.

Two of my patients, defrocked former ministers, sought my services because they’d taken advantage of their religious authority and charismatic charm with multiple members of their separate congregations. One still retained an imposing presence and a powerful voice, a capacity he’d used to deliver stirring sermons. His shame was almost palpable.

Another man I’m thinking of, a doctor, employed several ex-patients in his office of female employees. Those with whom I spoke all admired him, but people in authority who provide treatment to a person in distress often receive this kind of attachment and appreciation.

This is what erotic transference tends to involve. The transferential object needn’t be Brad Pitt or whoever is the latest heartthrob.

Well, the odd man I’m describing owned lots of “presence,” an indefinable quality of strength or self-assertion, self-confidence, or magnetism setting an individual apart from others. One might describe it as an aura of sorts.

Most of humanity becomes invisible in a crowd, while those with “presence” stand out no matter their size.

Thus, perhaps it should be without surprise to discover the physician I’m describing took one of his employees, a former patient of course, into his office about once a week.

The couch doubled as a foldout bed. If you entered his “castle” after she exited, the scent of sex remained.

Back to me. I confess I sometimes could be a bit too attentive to the faces and bodies seeking psychological assistance. At least my eyes were. As a psychologist, you need to remind yourself of what you are doing, what your duty is and return your attention to the patient’s needs.

This isn’t difficult if your role remains well-defined internally. Most get this right, I suspect. Otherwise, malpractice insurance costs would be closer to those of medical specialists.

Patients test therapists. Not all, but some of those whose life histories included soul-breaking physical and emotional violations.

A few push their new doctor with displays of anger or intimate provocation. They come to the consulting room with memories of people who appeared kind and turned cruel, the ones who offered comfort as an avenue to their own carnal and controlling advantage.

These injured folks don’t want to be hurt again. They plan attire and enticement to assure themselves the kindly and wise Dr. Jekyll won’t become Mr. Hyde. I also encountered a couple of traumatized women who brought small knives into the office in an attempt to menace me.

Safety and testing take many shapes. It can also serve to control the practitioner, rather than submitting to control by him.

I’ve read nothing about erotic transference and countertransference (when the counselor experiences a desire to pursue a client) specific to the new virtual, computer-mediated age of treatment.

It will be interesting if research informs us whether the power of transference can jump over and through the Zoom screen. I imagine it sometimes can.

From a distance of 10 years since retirement, my take on all this is that we psychologists and other helping professionals cannot but bring the whole of our humanity and personality into our vocation. Knowing yourself well as a healer means you should keep your focus and actions in check.

Of course, we are human, and humans do many things they shouldn’t. Be grateful, then, to find those talented professional souls who don’t, no matter their line of work.

======================

The first photo is of Ingrid Bergman and Mathias Wieman in a promotional shot from the 1954 movie Fear. The following image is a screenshot of Eva Marie Saint from On the Waterfront, also of the same year. Finally, a screenshot of Audrey Hepburn in War and Peace, a 1956 movie. All are sourced from Wikimedia Commons.

December 16, 2017

Is Erotic Transference Ever the Thing We Call Love?

Erotic transference is troublesome. Counselors are trained to view its occurrence in one way only: a counterfeit of real love. Sexual feelings toward the therapist are pathologized, made into a kind of specimen for microscopic examination rather than something more basic. Is there another way? Are a patient’s affection and desire for the counselor ever no different than the early stages of romance? Perhaps we therapists go too far in making something unusual of a thing we might otherwise call love.

For those unfamiliar with the topic, I’d suggest you read my 2015 essay before proceeding. The psychoanalytic view of erotic transference refers to its infantile nature, an unrealistic and intense quality of “wanting” presumably not found in other romantic attachments. The contrast with non-clinical love is emphasized more than the likeness.

What I wrote in 2015 reflected the field’s accumulated wisdom and the observations of countless practitioners who recognized the amorous gaze of the patient across the room: the look that signaled “I only have eyes for you.” The allegedly misplaced affection is a common therapeutic occurrence, marked down because of its commonness and the clinician’s need to guide the process toward a therapeutic end, not a romantic one.

I am not talking about the extreme of erotic transference, where desire becomes obsession and stalking. Within the less acute expression of feelings, however, I would include those patients who profess their love (or keep it secret), say their genitals lubricate (or, for men, become erect) in session; offer themselves in words, dress to seduce, and bring suggestive gifts to the doctor. All these happened in my practice. They happen in every practice.

More than rejection frustrates such clients. They can feel discounted, their yearning made into another treatment issue to be worked on, worked through, and worked-over. They are told their emotions will likely disappear even if those stirrings are the most enlivening experience in their lifetime. The therapist’s intellectualization of the heart-throb and heartache makes the matter of the client’s heart a conundrum for the doctor’s head. The patient and practitioner then operate in two universes: the former feeling the issue, the latter thinking about it, unless he reciprocates the patient’s sentiments.

My profession considers erotic transference a kind of mistaken identity due to your history and because of the nature of treatment. A sensitive and wise healer gives all his attention, looks in your eyes, and accepts you without judging. You know little about his personal life. You automatically infer qualities in him for which you have no evidence, unconsciously imagining he is like the loving parent you never had (for example). He seems to fill a vast, cavernous, lonely gap in your heart. All true, but not so different from other infatuations.

Perhaps we would do better to recognize that love often depends on what we don’t know about the other, not only what we do. How many people understand the partner well before they fall in love? Many questions have not been asked – may never be asked and answered by words or observation. This is true in the extreme for young people, where the right questions are not yet known. They do not even know themselves. Hormones rule the day.

Counselors also should admit – especially in this day of therapists’ websites describing their practices, listing credentials and schools attended, and maybe even including a blog (!) – that we aren’t the blank slates we believe ourselves to be. Unless seated behind the reclining patient’s pillowed head, we have always had a physical presence, tone of voice, a smile, laughter, and movement. No, the client is not dealing with a shadow or computerized speech.

In almost all fresh attractions, aren’t the fantasy, the newness, and imagination what it means to be in any romantic, early-stage love? Throw in uncertainty, idealization and physical urging. These are among the most magical and wondrous qualities of romance. Over the long haul it can be argued that loyalty, devotion, kindness, respect, similar interests, proportion, compatible values, pulling together, and shared experience are more important, but they do not send a shiver down the spine.

Devotion does not levitate, no matter however precious and essential.

Therapists are not the only people about whom one experiences transference (or stimulus generalization). Has not a new person reminded you of someone else in your past? Think for a moment:

  • Bosses, teachers, the next door neighbor.
  • The neighborhood bully, father and mother figures.
  • Political leaders.
  • Mentors, the people we instinctively dislike, and those we are automatically drawn to.

If I am right, the therapeutic management of transference requires a different kind of sympathy, more recognition for the genuine nature of what is in the patient’s heart and the sensual pulse in her being. This will be difficult for the therapist, rather like dealing with someone who says “I love you” outside the controlled atmosphere of his sealed-off office; with its sex-discouraging moat, doctor-patient ethical boundaries, and the requirement of therapeutic distance.

All this suggests that the process of her “getting-over” erotic transference may not only be a matter of uncovering the mistaken identity nature of feelings more properly attached to other people and earlier times, and releasing emotions derived from past relationships. The unrequited love then demands grieving not unlike other lost loves. Perhaps such grief-work can only be managed with a different therapist, although – one hopes – after the remaining treatment goals have been accomplished.

Though many counselors know better, those who believe the mistaken identity only happens in the office need to think again. The same patient who falls for you might already have fallen for others who reminded her of a loved one, with as little ability to look past the transferential aura to the truth of who her partner really was.

One more thought. Should therapists give a written warning to all their new clients?

BEWARE! YOU MIGHT FALL IN LOVE WITH ME!!!

If you are laughing for more than a few seconds, begin reading again at the top.

—

The first (undated) photo, School Cafeteria, was taken by the Adolph B. Rice Studios and comes from the Library of Virginia. The following picture of Swimmers Annette Kellerman and C.M. Daniels was taken in 1907 by G.G. Bain and is the property of the Library of Congress. Both are sourced from Wikimedia Commons.