What is it about?
In this essay, I address eroticism as an extension/expansion/elaboration of the sexual origins of the erotic into numerous aspects of lived experience that can be registered through the senses. An absorption in the sensual is viewed as a capacity for a heightened presence to the sensory qualities of the world around us – an ability to take in, and relish, the experiences of the senses that life offers if one is “awake” to this aspect of living. I explore specifically the opportunities for an increased sensuousness of experience – unfolding in a myriad of potentials – that women may cultivate as they age. I suggest that such eroticism is a source of vitality and creativity that can be accessed and further developed within the shared matrix of the analytic field.
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Why is it important?
When considering the erotic in analytic treatments, clinicians tend to think in terms of transferences and countertransferences, most often oedipally-based wishes for sexual union of varying expressions. My subject, however, is eroticism as a quality of embodied experience – sensuality – and its presence, or absence, in the patient, in the clinician, and in the analytic field that the pair creates and inhabits. Rather than sexual/romantic wishes for/toward one another, eroticism is, I put forth, a sensibility that each person can access within the self, and share, such that the analytic field is invigorated. I focus my inquiry by considering a capacity in older women for eroticism: a love of life as a feast for the senses.
Perspectives
I suggest that such eroticism is a source of vitality and creativity that can further develop at any stage of life, potentially especially so as we age. Eroticism may be thought of as an extension/expansion/elaboration from its sexual origins into any aspect of lived experience that we register through our senses. I view this absorption in the sensual – our sensuality/eroticism – as a capacity for a heightened presence to thesensual aspects of the world around us – an ability to take in, relish, the experiences of the senses that life offers to us if we are “awake” to this aspect of living. In this essay, I am wanting to meditate upon the opportunities for an increased sensuousness of experience – unfolding in a myriad of potentials – which women, as we age, may cultivate.
Dr. Dianne Elise
Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: The Eroticism of Everyday Living: Women and Aging, Psychoanalytic Inquiry, April 2025, Taylor & Francis,
DOI: 10.1080/07351690.2025.2471246.
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