Clinical Holistic Medicine: Avoiding the Freudian Trap of Sexual Transference and Countertransference in Psychodynamic Therapy

Abstract

Sexual transference and countertransference can make therapy slow and inefficient when libidinous gratification becomes more important for both the patient and the therapist than real therapeutic progress. Sexual transference is normal when working with a patient's repressed sexuality, but the therapeutic rule of not touching often hinders the integration of sexual traumas, as this needs physical holding. So the patient is often left with sexual, Oedipal energies projected onto the therapist as an “idealized father” figure. The strong and lasting sexual desire for the therapist without any healing taking place can prolong therapy for many years, as it often does in psychodynamic psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. We call this problem “Freud's Trap”. Freud used intimate bodywork, such as massage, in the beginning of his career, but stopped, presumably for moral and political reasons. In the tradition of psychoanalysis, touch is therefore not allowed. Recent research in clinical holistic medicine (CHM), salutogenesis, and sexual healing has shown that touch and bodywork (an integral part of medicine since Hippocrates) are as important for healing as conversational therapy. CHM allows the patient to regress spontaneously to early sexual and emotional traumas, and to heal the deep wounds on body, soul, and sexual character from arrested psychosexual development. CHM treats sexuality in therapy more as the patient’s internal affair (i.e., energy work) and less as a thing going on between the patient and the therapist (i.e., transference). This accelerates healing, and reduces sexual transference and the need for mourning at the end of therapy.

Clinical Holistic Medicine: Teaching Orgasm for Females with Chronic Anorgasmia using the Betty Dodson Method

“…The next important research question is if the much more subtle shift from immature clitoral sexuality, closely correlated to neurotism and immature psychological defenses [47], to mature vaginal sexuality can also be facilitated by the tool of direct sexual stimulation. Our own findings here and in other studies [13,14,28,28,30,31,32,33,37], and the above-mentioned findings of Brody et al of strong associations between genital maturity and a number of aspects of health [47,48,49,50,51,52,53,54,55,56,57,58,59,60,61], justifies such a study. From a theoretical perspective, it is highly likely that the resistance work done in this kind of therapy is quite unique and therefore of great value when other methods fails.…”

“…This was done successfully and there were no problems with transference and countertransference even though the female therapist and the patient were alone in the session. Problems arising from sexual transference and countertransference [34,35,36,37] can be hard to identify as such by the therapist, but are normally quite obvious for a supervisor [38]. The therapist was under supervision during the whole period of treatment, but the supervisor did not at any time notice any problems related to sexual transference or countertransference in the therapy.…”

“…In this study, all participants were specifically interviewed about any negative side effects of the treatment, and we very carefully evaluated if there had been any signs of sexual violation (i.e., signs of retraumatization) or complaints over experienced sexual violation (which most often is caused by transferences [34,35,36,37], but still must be thoroughly investigated), and we found none. Brief reactive psychoses and retraumatization were specifically looked for, but were not found.…”