Abstract
Sexual transference and countertransference can make therapy slow and inefficient when libidinous gratification becomes more important for both the patient and the therapist than real therapeutic progress. Sexual transference is normal when working with a patient's repressed sexuality, but the therapeutic rule of not touching often hinders the integration of sexual traumas, as this needs physical holding. So the patient is often left with sexual, Oedipal energies projected onto the therapist as an “idealized father” figure. The strong and lasting sexual desire for the therapist without any healing taking place can prolong therapy for many years, as it often does in psychodynamic psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. We call this problem “Freud's Trap”. Freud used intimate bodywork, such as massage, in the beginning of his career, but stopped, presumably for moral and political reasons. In the tradition of psychoanalysis, touch is therefore not allowed. Recent research in clinical holistic medicine (CHM), salutogenesis, and sexual healing has shown that touch and bodywork (an integral part of medicine since Hippocrates) are as important for healing as conversational therapy. CHM allows the patient to regress spontaneously to early sexual and emotional traumas, and to heal the deep wounds on body, soul, and sexual character from arrested psychosexual development. CHM treats sexuality in therapy more as the patient’s internal affair (i.e., energy work) and less as a thing going on between the patient and the therapist (i.e., transference). This accelerates healing, and reduces sexual transference and the need for mourning at the end of therapy.
Highlights
There is plenty of literature on the need to work in abstinence, and almost every therapist on the planet agrees with the Hippocratic ethics of avoiding sexual contact with their patient
Sexual transference and countertransference is, a concern in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy, but there is a scarcity of papers that analyze this mutual libidinous gratification, in spite of the fact that the issue is highly disturbing to so many therapists[1]
We find it highly unlikely that Freud really believed that stopping bodywork would solve the problem of therapists acting out; probably, Freud, who was a politically cunning developer, intended to modernize the somewhat old-fashioned holistic medicine and take it into a medical practice that could be widely accepted and used by his contemporary fellow therapists
Summary
There is plenty of literature on the need to work in abstinence, and almost every therapist on the planet agrees with the Hippocratic ethics of avoiding sexual contact with their patient. The indication for this treatment was “hysteria” (from Greek Hystera: Uterus), believed to signify a broad range of female mental illnesses This treatment ( called vaginal acupressure) gives intense physical holding to the female patient’s body, including the genitals[15,16], allowing her to regress and heal infantile sexual traumas related to infantile (auto)erotism (see below). This treatment is highly rational from a psychodynamic perspective, in spite of obvious ethical problems[15,16] (see below), which presumably inspired Hippocratic doctors to develop their famous ethics
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