Erotic Transference Explained

I totally understand. But it really does get easier. I'm at the point now where I can even look at my T while we're discussing these issues because he's done a phenomenal job of helping me feel safe and understood.

Hi SoupDragon. An excellent question! While both are paying attention to you, the T is to be credited for helping you rediscover those good feelings. You are not truly in love with the T, just wanting to hold on to those positive feelings that you may not have felt for a long time, or ever! Your goal is to be able to take those stong feelings and experience them in the real world.
Let me put it another way. Let`s say you take knitting class. The teacher teaches you how and when you make your first scarf, boy do you feel good about your achievement! You now can knit! When the class ends, you have the skills to knit on your own and get the same positive feelings when you complete your first sweater. But the sweater won`t be for your teacher, but for someone close to you, or yourself!
Same feelings/ appropriate (for you) recipient Hope that helps! Velvet

Fathers are accredited to how we girls see and feel about ourselves as we mature. Based on their responses to us, the script is written on how we will relate to the opposite sex. (Of course this is based on the heterosexual model.)

For example, if your dad is affectionate you will seek out a similar man when you start dating. If your Dad never compliments you on your appearance you may question if boys will be attracted to you. Oversimple examples, I`m afraid! (Need coffee!) Velvet

Ok here`s a more concrete one. Let`s say your Dad is funny, elegant, gentle, supportive (yes girls can do anything!) charming, affectionate and always up for an adventure, teaches you how to make things and explains life`s lessons in a way that make sense to you*, what sort of man would you look for... A cold, distant, workaholic with substance abuse issues... Not likely!
* Based on a composite of the men who raised me before I got in with a bad crowd at age 10.

Bingo! Love is a process that takes time and effort.

About your anger... I was full of resentment that at my advanced age I was still dealing with the aftermath of my adoptive family`s incompetence. But I realized that wasn`t working for me anymore. So I let it go and started parenting myself. A former T gave me this analogy: If you store acid in a container so that you can throw it at your enemy, the container will likely be harmed before you get your chance at revenge... The best revenge is to live well! Show those that did you harm, that you turned out just fine despite them!

I had an Aunt whose philosophy was to not be serious about someone until you knew two things: He would visit you in the hospital -no question. You knew his grandmother`s middle name. Even better if she told you personally.

The really cool thing about understanding transference is that you can use it as a tool to understand your reactions in a variety of real life relationships. Over the past year my T worked extensively with me to stop isolating myself and become involved with other people, and we used many sessions to assess my progress and make sense of my reactions to people as I developed new relationships through a volunteer position at a local human service agency. I'm actually becoming quite good at noticing when I'm having unusually strong reactions to people, both positive and negative, and I can step back and ask myself if this person reminds me of anyone in my past, and if so, how? This process has enabled me to moderate my behavior toward people so that I don't immediately reject a relationship with someone I have strong negative feelings toward, and I don't immediately try to get too close to someone I have intensely positive feelings toward. There were two women in particular that I had negative reactions to immediately, both of whom I needed to have regular contact with at this agency, and I almost quit before I even got started. But with my T's help and encouragement, I was able to understand where my reactions were coming from, and now, a year later, I feel very comfortable with both of those women.
It's really fascinating to understand how our past experiences shape our lives and influence our decisions in relationships. If I had followed my "gut feelings" in that situation I would have left the agency immediately, and I would have missed out an experience that's been tremendously healing in a variety of ways and has helped me rely far less on my T for outside support, because now I have a network of new relationships that are both satisfying and reciprocal.

This is a really interesting thread.

I wish I could talk about some of my feelings with my T, but I am not ready for that. I am planning on telling him next session that I like the way he makes me feel - that is the most I can disclose right now. I'd like to do it in baby steps, but I don't really see how that's possible. I guess I'll just take it one session/week at a time.

This is unreal. I am so so grateful for this excerpt. I can not tell you how thankful I am. I have been looking for some explanation to what the hell is going on with me. I have seen this new T only 3 times and my feelings are quite intense. This has happened over and over and over and I hate it. I'm horrified at it. I don't want her to know how desperate for love I really am. That's pretty embarrassing. What is so strange is that I never accepted it from my spouse or any boyfriend. It just happens with therapists or teachers. I can't quite figure that out. I don't want to mention it to her, because I'm still uncertain as to how much experience she has, how she'll handle it, and I don't want to make her uncomfortable so soon in the process. She has not brought up "the therapeutic relationship" at all, so she may not even operate that way. I feel like I can't really deal with any issues at all because these feelings are so intense and seem to take over everything. It happens every time I enter therapy. I never seem to resolve it. Thanks again for posting this. I've printed it out to potentially show it to her one day.

WantingtoHeal: I want to tell you that you aren't alone! The article helped me too though I already knew that my "pattern" as I call it is somewhat normal for those in therapy. But mine is more intense, like yours, and happens with every T I've seen. Before Ts, it happened with others who were unavailable to me. I "fall in love" with them, I obsess about them, I want them to be everything to me. That's become my main issue in therapy, how to stop wanting someone to be "that person who they cannot be" to me. It's very painful but I think it CAN be worked through. In this therapy I'm focusing a lot on what has caused me to behave in that way. While the article explains a lot, we each have our individual family history, genetic makeup, and personality.

Since this is your pattern, it will probably help you very much to tell your T when you feel comfortable, that is, so you can address why you feel the way you do for Ts and teachers, and what you can do to get some of those love needs met by people in your RL as well as some from your T.

I'm sceptical in my head, but my heart tells me you are right.

T can't be my mother and can't rewrite history. I know this in my head.

But sometimes, when the connection is especially strong...

My younger self, say 14, feels the love and it's like T was there looking after me 34 years ago. And I was never neglected or ignored or unloved because T was there all the time.

At moments like that, she is my mother and she has rewritten history and it's real.

I guess you had to be there.

this is an amazing thread, thanks all of you for a lot of thought provoking comments !!!!!

Velvet - Could we please have the source of what was quoted in the original post?

SAWE: http://www.guidetopsychology.com/ero...ansference.htm

Does anyone know what percentage of clients in therapy experience erotic transference as discussed in the article (not necessarily sexual according to the article)? I thought it was MY "pattern" but the way the author describes it, it makes my feelings par for the course!

Do you think it's 50% or more like 90%? Any ideas or has anyone read statistics anywhere?

Here's an interesting twist. do "you" have erotic or eroticized transference?

Erotic and eroticized transference--A self psychology perspective.
By Trop, Jeffrey L.
Psychoanalytic Psychology, Vol 5(3), 1988, 269-284.
Abstract
The purpose of this article is to elucidate the contributions of self psychology to the understanding of the erotic and eroticized transference. Aspects of two cases are discussed (24- and 32-yr-old women), which illustrate the differences between these two transference configurations. Eroticized transference emerges when selfobject longings for mirroring are eroticized. Self-esteem in these patients is defensively structured around a capacity to engender sexual excitement in another person. The interpretive process should reflect an awareness of sexuality as a defensive substitute for other selfobject longings and a genetic understanding of the specific absence of responsiveness to other aspects of the self. Erotic transference emerges in a very different manner. These patients begin to develop sexual feelings for the therapist as a revived longing for a response to the sexual aspect of the self. It is an attempt to resume a normal developmental pathway and consolidate a sexual sense of self. The family background of these patients reflects an absence of affirming responses in regard to physical qualities and sexuality. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)
to purchase article for us$11.95
http://psycnet.apa.org/index.cfm?fa=...2003-05657-005

and from the ncbi.nih.etc etc

Types of sexualized transference.

The term sexualized transference is often used as the most general term and encompasses at least two more specific experiences, erotic and eroticized transference. Differentiating between the two types of sexualized transference is important because the intensity, the underlying motivation, and the appropriate interventions are different.

Erotic transference.

The term erotic transference is generally reserved for positive transferences accompanied by sexual fantasies that the patient understands to be unrealistic.7 This transference does not interfere with the patient's goal to gain insight and mature attachments.

Eroticized transference.

Eroticized transference is an intense, vivid, irrational erotic preoccupation with the therapist characterized by overt, seemingly egosyntonic demands for love and sexual fulfillment.1 The patient is unable to focus on developing appropriate insights and attends the sessions for the opportunity to be close to the therapist, with the hope that the therapist will reciprocate love.

Thanks, hanskster. That's very interesting! I'm not sure which I have, maybe a little of both but not exactly. I don't want sex with my T!

The article Velvet posted makes it seem like it's more about love and not sex, and that was "erotic transference". I'm confused. Maybe the semantics and labeling don't matter so much?

What bothers me is that it's my pattern. I thought it was mine alone, not the rest of the world's. I'm half serious here, half joking.

I agree. Looks like they can't even agree on a definition across the two articles, unless i'm reading it wrong!

This is great Velvet Cactus - where did it come from? (sorry if you credited it, I just missed it I guess)

This is where it came from.

I just sent the article link to my T and told her it interests me and upsets me and that I want to discuss it with her in my session. Knowing that it's what I do, how I relate to her, makes it seem like how I feel about her isn't genuine. But is IS! I said that in my email. I don't want our relationship to be all about transference. It bothers me that I thought my other 4 Ts were special too!! I told her that too. I really have to talk this all out with her!

Hi WtH, like Rainbow mentioned, unavailable people are safer to get love from. Actually available people IRL scare the hell out of you because they are capable of getting close. This is called fear of intimacy.

if I may respond to myself! I told T today I don't see myself getting motivated to find love IRL cuz the last time I was there even casually with a friend (you know what I mean!), I was a sobbing mess. so is this why i'm self-sabotaging any progress towards beauty and housecleaning now? because the sooner THOSE things happen, the sooner the OTHER thing is gonna happen, because you know how irresistible I am! human fly head says in squeaky little voice, "help me!"

hankster, I didn't reply to this because I didn't know what you wanted or how it was supposed to help. Are you afraid to love someone in RL?

I think loving T is easier and safer than love IRL. Out in the world we have to live life, we have to give and take, we have to decide who's going to wash the dishes, we have to agree where to go on vacation. It's messy and it can lead to bad feelings.

Of course love of T feels perfect. Slightly messy but confined in those well preserved boundaries. We have little responsibility in session except be ourselves. And T doesn't have any expectations of us - she/he is not waiting for us to take out the garbage or cook the dinner. It's very easy in just those very few isolated hours in their office.

A relationship like that could never ever never ever survive in the real world. It doesn't mean that our relationship with T isn't real - it's real in that office. I love my T and I depend on her and I cherish her. But I know for sure I don't want her in my real world. I want her the way she is - listening to me intently, accepting of me completely, 100% focused on helping me. That's what i want and need and love. It's perfect.

All this is what I've been going through these past few months, maybe more, in my therapy. For me it is parental transference. Started out not being sure if I liked her as I had just ended a therapy relationship with a therapist that I really liked right away and developed that parental transference for (after therapy with her had ended). So I was very guarded with trusting her and opening up to her and didn't want to do the same thing however it happened anyway. Few months ago she said: "Bad Jenn doesn't like me." Inside my head I heard "Good Jenn loves you" and realized that I 'love' her. Several months prior to that I had wondered if the same thing was happening with her as it did with my other therapist. She does know this. I told her that I 'love her' this January. The most recent thing that I wrote (I journal a ton) that she saw I said that "my feelings for her haven't changed. I still love her. Love you Dr (first initial of last name). Love you Dr (shortened version of her first name that she uses)." She said that we'll talk about 'love' during our next session in a couple days. This forum has been great cause I seem to be going through a lot of the things that others are going through as well. It is good to know that I'm not the only one who this stuff happens to.