Sexuality and attachment from a clinical point of view

Abstract

The clinical experience of five attachment-based psychoanalytic psychotherapists is pooled in an exploration of how issues in relation to sexuality and attachment emerge in the consulting room. Our clinical experience shows that sexuality, far from being a powerful instinctual drive that invariably needs to be explored clinically, is far more a reflection of early attachment histories. Instead of the standard pressure cooker of sexuality, which if not expressed leads to pathological emotional conflict we identify a melancholy sexuality, a cold arctic-like desert unwarmed by human relationship that barely achieves expression. We find that a broader and more fluid conception of sexuality as not just genitally focused but as erotic helps us relate to difficulties around sexuality as having to do with conflicts in relation to or associated with desire for contact and connection linked to past histories of loss, abandonment and sexual abuse. We argue theoretically that the psychological dimension of the biological system of human reproductive capacities, that is to say, the actually lived experience of human sexuality cannot be separated from the psychological dynamics of attachment within a social and cultural context. We discuss clinical issues including the sequelae of primary erotic attachments and working with sexual fantasies and working with erotic transference/countertransference re-enactments. A clinical example illustrates in some detail how we work with an adult survivor of sexual abuse troubled by intrusive sexual fantasies.