The Sounds of Silence: Embodied Registers, Erotic Reverie

What is it about?

This paper engages a Winnicottian formulation of the analytic field to highlight the often unspoken, implicit erotic dimensions of analytic work. Material from an analysis with a very inhibited, emotionally constricted man shows both patient and analyst encountering difficulty in “locating” each other within the analytic field. Paradoxically, a felt sense of connection was also palpable, and possibly/impossibly erotic. Movement in the treatment required the development of what the analyst came to think of as an “erotic sonar”—a “sounding” in the erotic body of each participant that could indicate the place of creative connection. A sensing in the body for the “feel” of the analytic dyad became a kinetic reading of emotional closeness or distance, as well as indicating the subtle, and shifting, tones of the relationship. Emphasis is placed on bodily experience in a subjective registering of the erotic, both as sexuality and as a more general experience of passion, vitality, and creativity.

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Photo by Hassaan Here on Unsplash

Photo by Hassaan Here on Unsplash

Why is it important?

When erotic embodiment is considered within contemporary analytic models, dynamic formulations tend to retain a more traditional understanding of erotic transference and countertransference, located at the oedipal level with a truncated emphasis on genital longings. Our broader psychosexual heritage, beginning in infancy and continuing throughout life, can become somewhat obscured in these formulations. Additionally, the potentiating role of an analyst’s libidinal energy in facilitating the analytic process may be eclipsed as well.

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