Erotic overstimulation and the co-construction of sexual meanings in transference-countertransference experience

This paper attempts to explore the ways in which Western child-rearing practices do not provide an early interpersonal experience in which infantile, sexual, or sensual-erotic experience is held, contained, and given meaning within a safe parent-child dyad. It is the author's basic premise that this normative developmental process fosters a dissociation of unformulated aspects of early sexual and sensual-erotic experience, leaving much of the experience ensconced in unsymbolized and therefore relatively inchoate image, sensation, and affect. The impact of such a dissociation on the patient-analyst relationship is explored, specifically at times when sexual or erotic material begins to impact upon transference-countertransference processes. An extended clinical example is provided.