Hot Feelings: Sexual Transference and Countertransference with Male Mid-Adolescents and a Female Psychoanalyst

The author focuses on the workings of the female analyst-male pair in the consulting room when sexual feelings emerge as part of the adolescent storm. The need for open-bodiedness in relation to the perception of the bodily states of both the analyst and analysand is described and discussed. The author shows how somatic countertransference, reverie, and projective identification are harnessed creatively in the service of transformation. The importance of the third to help provide an analytic space for thought and meaning, rather than enactment and impasse, is discussed. The trajectory from the analyst's wish to silence sexual transference and countertransference in the consulting room, followed by the analyst's initial reluctance to discuss the hot feelings with colleagues, and then the impact of publication anxiety when writing through the experiences and revising this paper is described.