This book offers a comprehensive introduction to this key, yet challenging aspect of the psychoanalytic process. Despite emerging frequently in the psychoanalytic process, Andrea Celenza highlights the sparseness of literature on erotic transferences and a tendency to desexualise psychoanalytic theorizing, which she posits is a result of the inherent threat erotic transferences can pose to the analyst. By providing a thorough overview of the topic, clarifying terminology, and providing vivid case examples, Celenza seeks to redress this omission. Throughout this volume, she discusses the interplay of power and gender, along with chapters on the temptation of disclosure and the disturbing prevalence of sexual boundary violations. Providing practitioners with the tools to deal with the intense feelings that inevitably arise with erotic transferences, this book is vital reading for all psychoanalysts at all levels of experience and seniority, psychodynamic practitioners, instructors, candidates, and trainees.

Epistemologically, Celenza takes an intersubjective, social-constructivist approach and, therefore, describes clinical manifestations that reflect this underlying foundation. On a clinical level, she takes seriously all of the psychoanalytic approaches to emergent phenomena, including neo-Classical, neo-Kleinian, Object-Relational, Relational, and Post-Bionian Field Theoretical systems. The latter especially permeates her understandings of the role of countertransferences as this vantage point provides an essential channel for unconscious communication. All of these perspectives are organically interwoven into pertinent case illustrations.

This book is part of a series by Routledge comprised of dozens of books that will serve as concise introductions dedicated to influential concepts, theories, leading figures, and techniques in psychoanalysis. All volumes are characterized by “clarity, accessibility, and depth.” The purpose of the series is to offer compendia of information on particular topics within different psychoanalytic schools. These books make intricate ideas comprehensible without compromising their complexity. The aim is to make contemporary psychoanalysis more accessible to both clinicians and the general educated public.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. What are erotic transferences?
3. Maternal erotic transferences
4. The erotics of power
5. Are erotic transferences gendered?
6. Comfort and containment of erotic language and feelings
7. Erotic transferences and sexual boundary violations

Reviews

“Andrea Celenza explores in this seminal book one of the most difficult – and not surprisingly least visited – theoretical/clinical areas of psychoanalysis from its beginnings to the present. With her long specific experience in observing and treating these often highly problematic transference configurations, she succeeds in clearly describing their variety and complexity. Erotic transference is thus transformed, in many cases, from insurmountable obstacles to treatment into valuable opportunities for ever deeper and more effective analysis at the heart of human sometimes dramatic relational experience.”

Stefano Bolognini, MD; IPA Past-President; author of Vital Flows Between Self and Non-Self: The Interpsychic, (Routledge, 2022).

“Erotic transferences are ubiquitous. However, they are often denied, buried, projected, dismissed, overlooked, feared, or hidden in the darkest corners of the psyche. In this outstanding tour de force, Andrea Celenza brings them out of the darkness and into the daylight. In so doing, she enlightens her readers while also providing the reader with a brilliant guide. I highly recommend it to clinicians and educators alike.”

Glen O. Gabbard, MD, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Baylor College of Medicine, author of Boundaries and Boundary Violations in Psychoanalysis (American Psychiatric Publishing, 2016).

“I thought I knew a lot about this topic, but I learned many new things from this lucid, accessible and stimulating book. Andrea Celenza is right that psychoanalysis has been desexualised. As one of the foremost experts on sexual misconduct, she now places that phenomenon in the much larger and more positive context of the erotic dimensions of psychotherapy. What she writes will be essential reading for therapists of all schools and at all levels of experience.”

Prof. Andrew Samuels, author of A New Therapy for Politics? (Routledge, 2019) and From sexual misconduct to social justice (Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 1996).

“Andrea Celenza brings together in this contemporary volume her years of expertise in the areas of sexuality and erotic life within psychoanalysis. Written in an accessible style, this book will be a valuable resource for both clinicians in training and those already in practice. Celenza’s evocative depiction of both the challenges and the creative potential of engaging the erotic in clinical work will stir deepening reflection on this crucial, yet neglected topic.”

Dianne Elise, PhD, author of Creativity and the Erotic Dimensions of the Analytic Field (Routledge, 2019).

“In Erotic Transference: A Contemporary Introduction, Andrea Celenza delves deeply and courageously into the often-avoided place of sexuality and the erotic in psychoanalysis.  Skillfully defining the various forms of erotic transference, Celenza looks the desexualization of our field in the eye, as she addresses our transgressions, fears and vulnerabilities. A powerful and important volume that brings sexuality and eroticism back into psychoanalytic theory and practice.”

Galit Atlas, PhD. Faculty NYU Postdoc, author of Emotional Inheritance: A Therapist, Her Patients and the Legacy of Trauma  (Little, Brown Spark, 2023).

“Andrea Celenza brings back to the fore what psychoanalysis started on, repressed sexuality. The need for such a book, examining in depth the multiple causes to a desexualization in psychoanalytic theory, in spite of its continuous presence in the interplay of transference and countertransference, is critical for addressing the centrality of the body as reflected in the mind in the psychoanalytic process. This book does a great service to our profession.”

Rachel Boué-Widawsky, PhD, IPTAR, Clinical Assistant Professor at NYU Medical School, Associate Editor of Journal of Psychoanalytic American Association.

Abstract

Sexual boundary violations are considered the most serious ethical infraction in the mental health profession, as well as in higher education and pastoral counseling. Recognized as unethical due to the power imbalance inherent in the structure of the therapist-patient and teacher-student dyads, erotic contact between therapists and patients has been revealed in prevalence studies to occur at an unacceptably high incidence rate (9 to 12 per cent) among mental health practitioners. There exist few programs, teaching methods, and preventative measures that adequately address the problem of sexual boundary violations, despite the fact that discussing this problem openly is no longer taboo. Sexual Boundary Violations addresses this gap, providing educators, trainers, and clinicians with a resource to aid in developing programs, ethics workshops, seminars, and other educative or clinical teaching projects.

This book is distinguished from other texts in that it includes the publication of a preventative measure and assessment tool that caregivers may use to identify levels of risk or vulnerability at different points in their career. This measure derives form a research project that employed eleven reliable and validated psychological measures. This is an empirically controlled, double-blind study not previously published. Several of the measures are combined to develop a ‘Boundary Violation Vulnerability Index’ based on this research. This measure represents a preventative tool to aid therapists in training as well as those at different points in their careers in order to monitor levels of risk in an ongoing way. No other publication includes such a measure.

This book incorporates the latest findings in the area of sexual boundary violations. Similar books on the subject have not been published for over ten years. In addition, this book addresses problems in clergy counseling, an area not often included in books that address the problem of sexual boundary violations.

Reviews

“Andrea Celenza eloquently captures the damage–to themselves, their victims, their professions, and the wider social fabric–inflicted by professionals and clergy who transgress sexual boundaries. Her incisiveness about the non-negotiable need for sexual integrity is achieved, however, without unnecessarily demonizing those who cross lines that never should be crossed. Rather, she combines clarity tempered with compassion in addressing the characteristics of perpetrators. Most importantly, Celenza insists upon differentiating among transgressors. She challenges us to appreciate the unique humanity and circumstances of people many of us wish to lump together and dissociate from consciousness. She challenges us instead to hold in mind paradox and contradiction. This book is a vital component of continuing education and consciousness-raising for all of us who vow first to “do no harm.””
—Mary Gail Frawley-O’Dea, Ph.D., author, Perversion of Power: Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church; co-author, The Supervisory Relationship: A Psychodynamic Perspective; co-editor, Perpetrating Priests and Silent Victims: Sexual Abuse and the Catholic Church

“Sexual Boundary Violations is an essential text for the mental health field and should become required reading for therapists, analysts, teachers, and clergy. I am sure that we will use it in our training program as part of the required course on professional ethics. Comprehensive, well organized, clearly written, with numerous and often gripping clinical illustrations, the book not only reviews the literature but provides practical and helpful guidance for clinicians and clergy as well as for those who teach and supervise them.”
—Lewis Aron, Ph.D., New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis

“Dr. Celenza holds the various phenomena involved in sexual boundary violations by therapists and clergy to a multi-faceted lens of clinical psychoanalysis, supervisory consultation, psychological testing, empirical research, ethics, law–and that metapsychologically elusive human attribute called decency. She extends and deepens the existing knowledge in this realm while introducing many intriguing and useful novel concepts of her own. Avoiding the pitfalls of sentimentality and moralizing, Celenza unmasks the ubiquitous vulnerability to such transgressions and the profound damage caused by them. She delineates ameliorative and preventive strategies aimed at minimizing such betrayals. Unerringly compassionate in its approach, Celenza’s work is a shining tribute to the essential humanity at the heart of the psychotherapeutic enterprise.”
—Salman Akhtar, M.D., professor of psychiatry, Jefferson Medical College; training and supervising analyst, Psychoanalytic Center of Philadelphia

“Andrea Celenza is one of a handful of mental health professionals who has studied the problem of sexual boundary violations in the helping professions. Where others speculate, she brings years of clinical experience to bear on the subject. The result is a highly informative and comprehensive overview of the causes, consequences and casualties of sexual boundary violations. She maintains a humane perspective and offers valuable strategies for rehabilitation and treatment. All mental health professionals would be wise to spend some time with this superb new book.”
—Glen O. Gabbard, M.D., chair of psychoanalysis, The Brown Foundation; professor of psychiatry, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas

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