Malignant Eroticized Countertransference

Abstract

Gabbard (1994) divided the pathology of therapists, both male and female, who commit sexual boundary violations into those who are psychotic, those who are predatory psychopaths, those engaging in masochistic surrender, and those called "the lovesick therapist." Lovesick therapists are the most common type and manifest crucial narcissistic themes of "a desperate need for validation by their patients, a hunger to be loved and idealized, and a tendency to use patients to regulate their own self-esteem" (p. 127). Among the psychodynamic aspects of this curiously circumscribed area of loss of reality testing that makes it difficult for the therapist to see how self-destructive and harmful such enactment is, are an unconscious reenactment of incestuous longings, a misperception of the patient's wish for maternal nurturance as a sexual overture, enactments of rescue fantasies, a projected idealization of the self of the therapist, a confusion of the therapist's needs with the patient's needs, a fantasy that love is curative, acting out disavowed rage at the patient, or rage at an organization, an institute, or one's training analyst, a manic defense against mourning, a narcissistic fantasy that their sexual affair is an exception, insecurity regarding masculine identity, and assorted primitive preoedipal themes. Gabbard's (1991) erotized countertransference is one variety of what I have termed malignant eroticized countertransference. His variety is a development that occurs under the pressure of the patient's preemptive and compelling expressions of lust and love, the patient's erotic transference. But malignant eroticized countertransference can also occur without the patient having offered any such expressions; it can even occur on first meeting the patient when he or she walks into the office! This is akin to the romantic "love-at-first-sight" theme so favored in the movies and by novelists, but it is always pathological when it occurs in the therapeutic situation. Countertransference enactments are a creation between the patient and the therapist on a continuum from one pole, where the patient has just walked into the office and contributes almost nothing directly, to the other pole, where the therapist loses control of himself or herself as a response to the unbearable pressure of the patient's lust. In the treatment of malignant eroticized countertransference it seems clear from this discussion that every case should be evaluated psychodynamically and the treatment should be made to fit the patient, not the patient to the treatment. Each situation should be studied in psychodynamic depth without preconceptions based on generalizations or formulas. Therapists who are psychotic should of course be treated with antipsychotic drugs and usually should not be allowed to practice any further. Therapists who are psychopathic or sociopathic predators should certainly never be allowed to practice. Some of the individuals who are "lovesick," or, as I put it "love/lust obsessed," or those who have made a masochistic surrender to a sadistic destructive patient, are in need of reanalysis and have the potential to continue as effective therapists under careful supervision. Therapists like this do not deserve to be summarily dismissed from the profession but, like therapists who develop other serious neurotic problems, should receive appropriate help from us.