Int J Psychoanal 2006;87:10523

The analysts excitement in the analysis of perversion

STEPHEN D. PURCELL

2116 Sutter St, San Francisco, CA 94115, USA purcellsd@comcast.net

(Final version accepted 21 June 2005)

The author believes that unconscious sexual excitement in the transference and
countertransference is an especially problematic aspect of the analysis of perverse
character pathology and that perverse sexual gratication deserves a more prominent
position in the clinical theory of analyzing perversion than that which has been
assigned tacitly through analysts routine focus on the defensive and destructive
dynamics of perversion. He presents clinical material from the analysis of a perverse
patient that illustrates the role of excitement in the transference perversion established
in this analysis; and he asserts that gratifying perverse enactments occurring in the
transference perversion can appear not only as conscious or unconscious excitement
in the transference but also, at times most clearly, as the analysts excitement. The
author suggests that using a clinical theory that supports the analyst in understanding
his excited responses as perverse countertransferencesi.e. evoked excitement
complementary to the sexual component of a perverse transferencewill assist him
in locating and thinking about gratifying, perverse excitement in the transference
where it is most usefully analyzed. Finally, he discusses some of the reasons why
analysts might deny, suppress or otherwise avoid perverse countertransferences and
in so doing contribute to sustaining perverse resistances.
Keywords: perversion, countertransference, perverse countertransference,
transference perversion, narcissism, perverse transference, perverse resistance,
excitement

Perversion has long held the interest of psychoanalysts (Freud, 1905); and yet it
remains an area about which there is considerable diversity of theoretical understanding and, as far as I can judge, much to learn about its clinical management.
Among the technical recommendations relevant to the treatment of perversion is
the assertion that the detection and interpretation of the perversion as it is lived out
in the transferencethe recognition and analysis of the transference perversionis
fundamental and crucial (Joseph, 1971; Etchegoyen, 1978; Ogden, 1996). This way
of thinking about the psychoanalysis of perversion seems essential, but the technical stance required to accomplish this sometimes elusive goal can be a very difcult
thing to achieve.
My own experience in the analytic treatment of patients with perverse characters
has led me to the perspective, also taken by Joseph and Etchegoyen, that in many
respects perversion is usefully viewed as a sexualized form of narcissistic objectrelating (see also Parsons, 2000). While it is well known that a perverse mental
structure can serve as a defense against psychosis (Glover, 1933) and that it can also
occur within the structure of neurosis (Kernberg, 1989), there seems to me to be considerable clinical utility in recognizing the similaritiesand differencesbetween
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the psychodynamics found in most perverse character structures and those in less
complex narcissistic characters. For example, both demonstrate central conicts concerning experiences of true dependence (recognition of the analysts goodness) and
envy (rooted in acceptance of the analysts separateness) in the analytic relationship.
In relation to these psychic problems, perverse object-relating parallels narcissistic object-relating: the narcissist devalues while the perverse patient dehumanizes in
defense of anxiety associated with the analysts goodness, and each defends against
anxieties connected with separateness by fusing with the analyst through projective identication. Additionally, in the psychoanalytic treatment of perversion, the
analysts struggle with the defensive and destructive aspects of typical narcissistic resistances involving omnipotent, devaluing, and pseudoself-sufcient fantasies
brought into the transference relationship is further complicated and made more
arduous by the patients projective identication of sexual excitement.
In what follows, I take a perspective similar to the one articulated by Joseph
(1971) that the hidden erotization and the splitting and projective identication of
sexual excitement are dening features of a perverse transference. In contrast to the
more frequently made observation that perverse people consciously enjoy sexual
aims and objects that other people do not, Joseph noted the perverse patients need
to rid himself (through projective identication) of sexual excitement both because
of its connection with loveability, dependence, and envy, and because of the sadistic
nature of the excitement. She understood the function of this projective identication to be not only defensive against guilt and anxietyi.e. ridding the patient of
sexual excitement which was too much fused with sadism (p. 66)but also offensivei.e. aimed at the destruction of calm and strength in [the analyst] (p. 66).
This projective identication of sexual excitement, then, allows the patient to avoid
the related anxieties and is also a means of enviously (i.e. narcissistically) and sadistically (i.e. perversely) attacking and controlling his object.
In her seminal paper, Joseph wrote about the patients subtle, defensive, and
destructive enactment of a sadomasochistic relationship based on projective identication that distorts the patients perception of the analyst at the same time that it
facilitates the analysts behaving in a manner appropriate to the unconscious projectioni.e. enacting the projected sadism. And, most important to the perspective
emphasized here, she also noted the impact on the analytic relationship of the gratication found by the patient in the silent but exciting sadomasochistic acting in of
a perverse fantasy. Joseph observed how the patient might nd masochistic excitement through the experienced sadism in the analyst but also take sadistic pleasure
by establishing the perception of the analysts complementary masochism. Clearly,
from her perspective, there is the propensity for the patients perverse fantasy to
shape the actual analytic relationship through transferencecountertransference
enactments, and Joseph understood the mechanisms by which this shaping occurs
to include the patients use of words, silences, and passivity to excite, provoke, and
thus destroy the analysts strength and poisei.e. the goodness and separateness
required for the exercise of his or her analytic function. Joseph dened this sort of
misuse of the modality of communication in analytic intercourse as fundamental to
a perverse transference.

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Etchegoyen (1978) also understood the character of the perverse patient to be

narcissistic. He coined the term transference perversion as a label for a technical
concept parallel to those of transference neurosis and transference psychosis to
describe the special state of the transference relationship that must develop and
then be resolved in analytic treatment. Etchegoyen specied that, in the transference perversion,
erotization of the transference, a special narcissistic object relation which continuously tries
to construct an illusory unity between subject and object, and the utilization of both words
and silences to make the analyst excited and impatient, appear with clockwise regularity.
[T]he transformation of impulse into ideology [is] of decisive importance. (p. 52)

He agreed with Josephs observations and noted the ways in which the perverse
patient induces the analyst to act out his provocation in interpretations or
pseudointerpretations. Both Joseph and Etchegoyen emphasized the importance
of the patients attempts to destroy her/his analytic function by evoking defensive,
persuasive, or sadistic behaviors. Joseph stressed the important functions of
the patients fantasy of a sexually excited analyst and alluded to the signicant
contribution to stabilizing the perverse transference from gratication found by the
patient in the realization of a sadomasochistic transferencecountertransference
relationship.
Central to my thinking in what follows is the assumption that all analysts who
love doing psychoanalysis are predisposed to feeling excitement in varying amount
and quality while they work. Complex in their origins, an analysts excited responses
are conceptualized as part of his countertransference, and it is an integral part of the
analysts working through to sort out those elements of his excitement that are his
transferences to his patient from those that are reactions to his patients projections and communications. The analysts processing and eventual interpretive use
of excited countertransferencesespecially those that include a prominent sexual
componentis a particularly difcult task and one with potentially important implications for clinical work. For example, incomplete working through might lead to
the misunderstanding of an erotized countertransference (Gabbard, 1991) complementing a patients sexualization as an erotic countertransference, a misconstruction
that could lead the analyst to make signicant diagnostic and interpretive errors;
or, alternatively, if an analyst does not resonate with or is defended against experiencing projected sexual excitement, he may not have a conscious experience of the
sexual component of his excited countertransference. This latter circumstance has
important implications for working with all transferencecountertransference congurations that include sexual transferences; but I think prohibitions against perverse
sexuality and the shaping of countertransference reactions by clinical theory make
it a particularly difcult issue in the analysis of perversion.
Although reports of sexual countertransferences have increased in recent years,
it is my impression that countertransferential excitement has been acknowledged
only rarely in clinical reports in the literature on the psychoanalytic treatment of perversionDaviess 1994 report and Gabbards (2001) recent comments representing
notable exceptions. This relative dearth of reports of analysts excitement in clinical

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work with perverse patients strikes me as signicant both because sexual excitement
is a prominent feature of the phenomenology of perversion and because analyzing
excitement in the transferencecountertransference is understood theoretically by
some as being an essential element in the treatment of perverse characters (Ogden,
1996). Seen from the perspective that the perverse patient using projective identication regularly attempts to excite the analyst, it seems to me that there is a high
probability that there will be actualization in the countertransference of this transference fantasy of excitement in the analyst; and it is in this theoretical context that
I wonder about the origins and functions of the analysts actual excitement in the
analysis of perversion.
To illustrate the idea that the analysts excitement should occupy a more prominent position in our clinical theory of treating perversion, I shall now present some
of my experience from the analysis of a man with a perverse character. This clinical
material centers around my description of excited countertransferences that were
neither recognized as sexual nor understood as integral to the transference perversion until late in the analysis. Although I shall describe certain manifestations
of the transference and of my countertransference reactions occurring throughout
this treatment, I wish to call particular attention to the broader implications of the
transference fantasy that became conscious only after years of analytic work. I
believe that this fantasy can be viewed retrospectively as organizing much of the
transferencecountertransference experience preceding its revelation, and I have
come to see it as the core fantasy of the transference perversion established in this
analysis. Emphasized here is the clinical importance of analyzing the powerfully
stabilizing, interactional aspects of the unconscious, perversely gratifying, sexual
excitementi.e. the perverse enactmentsby locating and analyzing the ways in
which the patient actually induces responses in the analyst that contribute to these
enactments and enhance the patients perverse sexual pleasure. I think of these
evoked responses in the analyst that enhance perverse sexual pleasure in the transference as perverse countertransferences. My perspective is that these perverse
transferencecountertransference enactments often have an apparently non-sexual
character and that the unconscious sexual dimension of perverse transferences can
be manifested in the transference perversion, at times most clearly, as perverse
countertransferencesthe underpinnings of enactments that support perverse resistances, which are organized not only around the patients sexual pleasure but also
around the analysts excitement. My focus on the important role of sexual gratication in the analysis of perversion is analogous to that of Richards (2003), who
stresses the necessity of analyzing the gratication associated with the discharge of
aggression, a perspective that I believe is relatively overemphasized in our working
theory of treating perverse pathology. I shall not address comprehensively here
the clinical analysis of perversion; rather, I shall focus on the delimited perspective of the clinical necessity and the technical aspects of analyzing the unconscious
sexual gratications fundamental to perverse object-relating. I hope to contribute
something to the understanding of the technique used to apprehend this pleasurable
excitement by calling special attention to the clinical use of countertransference in
the analysis of the transference perversion.

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Clinical illustration

I shall give only a partial account of this complex, 13 year-long, four-sessions-perweek analysis in order to describe aspects of the work that specically address the
topics at hand. Mr. B was a very intelligent, unmarried businessman when he sought
treatment for what sounded to me initially like difculty in tolerating the authority
of his superiors in his work. He conveyed very little awareness or understanding
of the quietly deant behaviors that had resulted in his being dismissed by several
employers. He also reported experiencing a sense of inauthenticity and detachment
in all relationships, as well as frightening, episodic states of mind characterized by
a painful sense of isolation and darkness that he feared could overwhelm him and
perhaps result in his suicide. Born to wealthy parents who valued appearance and
focused their attention on their lives outside the family, Mr. B experienced the emotional ambience of his childhood home as arid and tense. His relationships with
women were either brief sexual affairs with objectied partners or more prolonged
relationships with women who took emotional and/or nancial advantage of him.
Mr. B initially acknowledged some anxiety about his sexual potency but made no
other references to any sexual anxiety or behavior.
Slowly, in the initial years of his treatment, Mr. B revealed various perverse trends
in his psychic functioning. For example, he related a recurrent fantasy into which he
had frequently retreated as a child. This fantasy included the use of a magical lotion he
applied to produce female breasts and in the fantasy there was unrestricted bisexuality providing happiness and sexual satiation for everyone. He sometimes masturbated
anally with fantasies of being either a man or a woman being penetrated by a man; and
eventually he told of a fantasy used to sustain potency during intercourse in which he
was required to watch his partner have sex with a rival man.
In the transference Mr. B was completely unemotional and he insisted, ideologically, on the correctness of a professional, never a personal, relationship between
us. He was my patient, I was his doctor; and anything that might be felt in a relationship outside these narrow connes was neither experienced in nor relevant to
his analysis. Despite this quality, I found him likeable as I listened to him speak
about his life, in general, in a manner that somehow was not uninteresting to me.
He would report dreamsincluding dreams in which I appeared and dreams with
obvious reference to events in the analysisbut he rarely associated or found his
dreams interesting or meaningful. The role of the interested one was tacitly assigned
to me and, for reasons that were unclear, I more or less accepted it. He would
respond politely to my interpretations, including transference interpretations, but
they seemed to have no emotional impact on him. I contented myself with small
bits of understanding that I thought I was achieving and patiently awaited more normative developments. I was working with a heterogeneous and loosely constructed
clinical theory containing elements related to pathological identication, oedipal
victory, harsh superego functioning, and success neurosis. I occupied myself, preconsciously, with the ongoing attempt to understand Mr. B empathically. Looking
back, I sense complacency in my tolerance of what was predominantly a quite bland
transferencecountertransference.

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The following vignette involving extraordinary circumstances illustrates a

typical, if unusually dramatic, series of enactments. About four months after beginning the analysis, a devastating urban re destroyed a great many buildings in the
precise area where Mr. B lived. On the day of the re, Mr. B did not attend his hour
and I did not hear from him. The media reported numerous fatalities as well as
massive property destruction in the re. The next day we had no scheduled appointment, but the following day I expected him as usual to arrive for his session. When
he did not come for his morning appointment and did not contact me, I became quite
anxious and fearful about his safety. Throughout the day I grew increasingly very
worried that Mr. B had been seriously injured or killed in the re. I was preoccupied with questions about his whereabouts and condition, and felt a deep sense of
affection and loss, and very sad, as I imagined various tragic scenarios to explain
his absence and his silence. Later in the day, I decided against bearing this profoundly unsettling discomfort any longer and I attempted to telephone Mr. B. His
home phone was not functioning so I called him at his work, where I was told by an
assistant that no one had seen or heard from Mr. B since the day of the re and that
his colleagues were terribly concerned for his welfare. My affection and my anxiety
were enhanced by this information.
Throughout the day my feelings of affection, apprehension and sadness continued to mount in a way that seemed beyond logical explanation; I had not felt
my involvement with Mr. B to be deep or affectionate, and yet my strong reaction
to what then seemed very likely to be his tragic death suggested otherwise. The
next day, at the time of his session, Mr. B again did not appear and I sat thinking
sadly, though now in a less anxious and more accepting way, about his demise.
Ten minutes into his session, Mr. B came walking in with a bounce to his step
and a cheery smile on his face. He lay down on the couch and began talking quite
matter-of-factly about the loss of his home in the re and about the various practical
difculties of the aftermath. For most of the hour he spoke about all of this, with no
mention of the missed sessions or of his ignoring me during our three-day separation; as he did this, my feelings of affection changed quickly into feelings of rage.
I tried not to convey this response as I listened to Mr. B talk about how he had to
struggle against his sense of pride to bring himself to ask friends for needed assistance, and I tried to nd empathy and compassionate understanding to explain his
implicit devaluing of me. When I eventually asked, still struggling to manage my
anger, why he had not phoned me or availed himself of help I might have provided
him in such an extremely disturbing circumstance, he responded nonchalantly that
the idea had not occurred to him. Here the hour ended. In subsequent meetings I
tried without success to analyze Mr. Bs perplexing attitude and behavior. Although
I offered tentative interpretations having to do with his inability to present himself to
me in a truly needful and relatively powerless state of mind, instead making me the
one who had a need (to know) and who felt powerless, none of my thinking meant
much to my patient who seemed mildly incredulous of my perspective. Our routine
resumed and my intense countertransference gradually abated.
In the early years of Mr. Bs treatment, there were other, less dramatic, instances
of his use of passivity and silence to provoke. For example, he often did not

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pay my charges in a timely manner and, repeatedly, would say nothing about the
delinquency. My attempts to think with him about the meaning of this behavior fell
atfor example with his bland assertion that he assumed that I knew he would pay
me when he had the money, that I trusted him, and that it was a mark of our deepening relationship that it did not have to be mentioned. I assumed that the annoyance
I felt was a response to his passive aggression, but repeated attempts to address this
hostility interpretively were never productive.
Gradually, Mr. B told me more about his womanizing and sexual escapades.
Much of what he told me was within broad limits of socially acceptable behavior.
But he also had a compulsive need and an uncanny ability to arrange for women to
perform fellatio on him. His partners were usually colleagues or subordinates in the
workplace, and these encounters took place semi-publicly (i.e. in his car in parking
garages) and somewhat recklessly (i.e. in his ofce during work hours). Although
I occasionally reacted (inwardly) to the always implicit degradation of his partners
with some combination of disapprobation and a sort of voyeuristic curiosity, my
primary conscious emotional reaction to hearing about these encounters was a kind
of irritation, along with some apprehension and concern for Mr. Bs safety. For
example, I worried that he could be in legal difculty for sexual harassment or in
professional danger of getting himself dismissed again.
Around the mid-point of the analysis, and at a time in his life when this fellatio
compulsion was most prominent, Mr. B also had a series of dreams that centered on
homosexual fellatio. These dreams often contained what were to me clear references
to his transference experiences and, on occasion, there were fellatio dreams in which
I appeared undisguised. Contrary to what one might expect, he had no perceptible
anxiety in reporting these dreams, nor was there signicant progress in understanding their unconscious meaning. Eventually, in talking with me about a typical dream
in which he performed fellatio on me, Mr. B commented that he didnt understand
why in his dreams he was always giving, never receiving, oral sex. I realized with
the help of his comment that my thinking about the dreams had been too limited
to their manifest content; I had not wondered enough in terms of the transference
meaning what the dreams were defending against or, more importantly, what they
were intended to elicit in me or to keep out of conscious awareness in either of
us. I was following his lead and talking with himmeaninglessly, in retrospect
about the meanings of his being the giver of fellatio. Soon thereafter, a consultant
to whom I presented this work made the astute observation that my close following
of his verbal material and my attempt to be empathically in tune with Mr. B seemed
very likely to be the enacted unconscious equivalent of my giving him fellatio. In
other words, in letting him put his ideas in my mind and his words in my mouth, in
the unconscious sexualized transference, I was allowing him to put his penis in my
mouth. The more I thought about this perspective the more shocking, disturbing,
and true it seemed to me.
In the analysis up to this point, Mr. B had intermittently experienced the dark
moods he felt were visited upon him. His verbal explication of these states was
limited to simple descriptors: dark, bleak, barren, empty, cold, arid, depressed,
devoid of life, hopeless. He conveyed paraverbally a kind of desperation, agitation,

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isolation, futility, and nihilism that seemed to overtake him and against which he
seemed unable or unwilling to protect himself. The emotional tone of these hours
was very bleak and oppressive, and my predominant countertransference in the
most intense of these experiences was fear. I felt afraid for his safety and afraid of
his nihilism and of my powerlessness to affect the destructive process. Often there
was an almost physical sensation of being forcibly pulled into a kind of downward
spiral of destructiveness and meaninglessness. Typically, there was no apparent
triggering event to these states and I felt helpless to understand or interpret their
meaning. Increasingly over time I began to feel some annoyance and irritation
along with helplessness, and I guiltily observed myself disengaging emotionally
so as not to be swept into a whirlpool of emotion. Although I tried repeatedly
to nd the meaning suggested by this powerful transferencecountertransference
experience, I was only able to think about it in terms of Mr. Bs destructiveness;
this thinking seemed incomplete and led me to no useful clinical understanding or
technical stance.
In the eighth year of his treatmentthere having been considerable diminution
in the intensity of his fellatio compulsion and a great deal of improvement in his
social and professional functioning, Mr. B achieved a very important professional
goal which clearly reected the therapeutic effect and value of his analysis. In our
rst meeting after this fact became clear, he responded with heartfelt expressions
of gratitude for my help, acknowledging my contribution to the psychic changes
in him in an unusually direct, emotional, and intimate manner. In the next hour,
Mr. B appeared in one of his dark moods, perhaps the most intense version of this
state that I had witnessed. He was aggressively nihilistic, fatalistic, and by innuendo
suicidalall with no rationale, no apparent meaning, and with no apparent selfobserving ability, certainly no curiosity. I felt particularly pulled to enter this
consuming vortex and more annoyed than usual about being acted on in this way.
Because I felt annoyed and not able to think meaningfully, I remained largely silent
in this hour.
In the following session, Mr. B presented in a more intense version of the
same state. I sensed in this hour a kind of aggressive exacerbation of the process
within him and in the energy with which he seemed to try to impose it on me or
to sweep me up in it. He seemed not so isolated but more clearly to be taking
action toward me as he methodically repeated the attack on me and on himself
that was implicit in the non-thinking about his destructiveness and in the nihilism
of his self-destructiveness. As he talked, I became aware for the rst time of what
seemed unmistakably to be an undercurrent of excitement in his voice. I said to
him that he was saying terrible things but sounding excited as he did so. Mr. B was
then totally quiet and still for several minutes, before nally saying, Its strange.
I did feel excited. While you were talking I was it was like I was dreaming but
it wasnt a dream because I wasnt asleep. I was driving a motorcycle and you
were riding behind me. We were going very fast down a steep hill, almost out of
control it was very dangerous. I was excited by this sexually. You couldnt
do anything. You were also excited. You had an erection. It was because you were
excited that you couldnt do anything. You were too excited to help me.

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His sexual sadismand, importantly, in his mind my sexual masochismmade

it impossible for me to provide for him the help he needed. This now-conscious
fantasy allowed me the understanding that had eluded me before: the self-destructive
and aggressive behaviors appearing so regularly could never be adequately understood as stemming only from the internal conicts concerning aggression and/or as
representing envious attacks on my goodness or otherness because they were simultaneously highly exciting sadistic enactments that included Mr. Bs perception of my
excited, masochistic, complementary response.
Discussion

The dimension of the transferencecountertransference experience on which I have

reported here illustrates well and is a useful reminder of the essential features of a
transference perversion (Etchegoyen, 1978). Mr. B used words, silences, and passivity to provoke and excite me, to disrupt my calm, to make me impatientall
responses evoked in me that interfered with my analytic function. He imposed on me
his ideology of affectless, apparently impersonal relating as a technique of evoking
countertransference responses that facilitated the use of projective identication in
the service of both narcissistic and perverse resistances. In these respects, the clinical
data reported illustrate with unusual clarity the phenomenology and dynamics (both
defensive and destructive) of a typical transference perversion. Furthermore, Mr.
Bs motorcycle fantasy, and by implication his psychodynamics, also specied two
other elements that I believe deserve more prominence in our clinical theory and
in our use of the concept of transference perversion: the patients hidden sexual
pleasure and its relation to the analysts reciprocating sexual excitement, in the
patients fantasy and in the analysts complementary (perverse) countertransference.
In other words, it is not only hidden sexualization by the perverse patient that is
at issue but also unconscious sexual gratication found in enactments to which the
analyst contributes that may be a signicant analytic problem.
Mr. Bs fantasy of his sadistic pleasure and my complementary masochistic
excitement is a succinct expression of a core transferencecountertransference
conguration that, when actualized in enactments, was unconsciously a powerful
gratication, a stabilizer of perverse dynamics, and a resistance to analytic understanding. The emergence of the fantasy into consciousness seemed to be a crucial
event in the analytic process, heralding signicant shifts in Mr. Bs psychic organization and in my analytic functioning. These clinical data and my inferences
from them support some tentative generalizations about the phenomenology of a
typical transference perversion and raise questions about the meanings and functions of (projected) excitement in the analysts experience.
Psychoanalytic perspectives on perversion emphasize the destructive aims, or
masturbatory qualities, or anti-relatedness aspects of perverse sexuality; but it has
also been my repeated observation that the sexual pleasure of perverse patients, like
that of other people, is characterized by the need for a complementary response
in their partners. One patient, overtly sexually sadistic, alternated between direct
attempts to humiliate me and invitations to bruise him with interpretations. It was

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as if his search for a partner with a complementary response superseded the specic
aim of his more uid sexual excitement. Another patient explained that in his compulsive telephone sex it was unsatisfying if the other just went along but very
fullling when he was able to perceive evidence that she actually had the complementary fantasythat is, he felt most excited and gratied when his fantasy
of domination was met by someone who actually had her own exciting fantasy of
submission. Accepted knowledge about perverse sexuality emphasizes its aggressive aspects and suggests that the sadist is not gratied if his victim nds pleasure
(Richards, 2003); but my observations of the sexuality of perverse characters suggest
to me that there is a range of sexual experiences correctly called perverse. Perhaps
the most destructive forms of perversion require only victims; but I suspect that
all but the most severely disturbed perverts also search out a sexual partnernot a
true victim. The partner is needed not to satisfy aggressive impulses but is required
to actualize the fantasies underlying the projective identication of sexual excitement. In my view, something important is obscured if the masochistic partner (e.g.
the analyst) is understood simply as a victim. If I am correct then I would expect
this reciprocity of (perverse) sexuality to be representedperhaps routinelyin
countertransferences that are complementary to perverse transferences; but sexual
excitement is not emphasized in the clinical theory of treating perversion and reports
in the literature of sexual aspects of countertransference in the analysis of perversion are unusual.
These observations lead me to wonder if, in addition to being widely viewed as
correct, it might also be tempting for psychoanalysts to approach the treatment of
perverse character pathology as a pathological mode of relating (Parsons, 2000),
or as a destructive reaction to trauma (Stoller, 1975), or as a pathologic relation to
reality (Grossman, 1993)tempting because these ways of understanding perversion can be adapted and used to support an analysts defensive avoidance of the
sexual dimension of the transferencecountertransference (see below). Working
clinically from these points of view analysts tend to focus their interpretations on
anxiety, defense, and aggression, and we expect to, and often do, experience, rage
in the countertransference (Richards, 1997, 2003). While each of these perspectives has a crucial role in understanding different perverse patients, and the same
patient at different times, one subtle, implicit, and incremental effect of working
from these theoretical points of view on the overall clinical theory actually being
used may have been tacitly to diminish the dynamic signicance of (unconscious)
sexual gratication in the transference and thereby the role of complementary
excitement in the countertransference. The importance of identifying and interpreting the unconscious transference gratication of hidden sadomasochistic,
sexual impulses is, therefore, de-emphasized in the mind of the analyst at work;
and, accordingly, the analyst is less likely to resonate with and to recognize sexual
excitement in the countertransference.
In our work we see only what we can tolerate seeing and what our theories alert
us to see; therefore, when our actual working theory implicitly minimizes the role
of sexual gratication in the genesis and maintenance of perverse psychic structures one consequence is that the enactment of sexual excitement by the analyst is

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facilitated. Analysts are accustomed to thinking about the unconscious sexual gratication embodied in neurotic symptoms and the pleasures experienced in as if
transference fantasy; yet enactments very often represent the functional absence of
symbolization. Thus, in the case of perverse transferencecountertransference enactments, the possibility of an as if transference experience may be, at least transiently,
precluded; and in its place enactment provides actual sexual gratication, however
hidden or not conscious, to which the analyst contributes. Specically, in a manner
analogous to Gabbards (1994a) description of the clinical complications that may
result from a separation of lust and love, in the analysis of perversion an analyst may
interpret transference aggression that has been separated in the analysts mind from
sexual excitement with which it is intimately entwined in the patients mindin
essence, being drawn in to colluding with the defensive functions and enhancing the
gratications of the hidden excitement. In this circumstance, emotionally charged
interpretations of transference aggression may then become vehicles for enactment
of countertransference anger (rage) and, simultaneously, for enactments providing sadomasochistic sexual gratication in the transferencecountertransference. For
example, at the time of the re and his disappearance Mr. B had not yet revealed
to me his perverse fantasies and unusual sexual compulsions and it actually had not
occurred to me to consider the possibility that his was a perverse character, that his
cheery smile on returning to his hours reected an unconscious sexual pleasure in
my interim suffering. In addition, I was not aware of any sexual excitement in me that
might have pointed to the existence of a perverse transferencecountertransference
enactment; to the contrary, I was feeling quite angry. But in presenting this clinical
material I have meant to convey that in the enactments at the time of the re, as in
the others reported above, I was quite charged with emotioni.e. excited to fervent
responses of affection and rage. My attempts to control and understand them notwithstanding, my emotional reactions were enacted; and I think it is very likely that Mr.
B perceived and interpreted the fervor of my response to his disappearance after the
re not only narcissistically (as representative of the goodness I saw in him and of my
need for him), but also perversely as my masochistic excitement in response to his
sadistic treatment of me.
More generally, throughout the rst eight years of this analysis I imagine that
Mr. B unconsciously experienced my empathic following of his material as my
submitting in fellatio, masochistically allowing him to put penis-words in my
mouth for his unconscious pleasure. The emotional activation and fear I felt when
he repeatedly plunged us into dangerous psychic descents toward suicide seem,
in light of the core fantasy of his transference perversion, almost certainly to
have been perceived by Mr. B as concomitant with my genital arousal. But, until
my patient revealed this fantasy, I was not able to entertain the possibility that
Mr. B experienced me as sexually excited. Another analyst, especially one who
felt more able to tolerate masochistic excitement and/or whose working clinical
theory more fully incorporated an emphasis on the perverse patients attempts to
excite the analyst with silence and passivity (Joseph, 1971; Etchegoyen, 1978),
might have inferred Mr. Bs perverse mode of relating; but I did not. Now, in retrospective reection on these enactments, I see the countertransference responses

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STEPHEN D. PURCELL

that supported them as perverse countertransferences; and I wonder whether these

excited responses to Mr. B, though not manifestly sexual in nature, were not only
perceived by Mr. B as sexual excitement but also might have contained unconscious (and, I wish to emphasize, potentially conscious) sexual elements. If so,
and if I were able to discern them, they might have provided a clue to the existence of an unconscious perverse sexual transference gratication.1
I think it is crucial to remain aware that transference gratications for the
perverse analysand are not found exclusively in the discharge of aggression but
are also actualized in hidden, sexually exciting transferencecountertransference
enactments, which may be sustained through the use of the analysts unconscious
countertransference. From this perspective, not only a patients exciting fantasy but
also the patients gratifying experience of exciting his analyst must be confronted
interpretively. To do this the analyst must be open to discovering the ways that he
unconsciously plays Echo to the patients Narcissus and, additionally in the analysis
of perversion, the ways that he acts as the masochist to the patients sadist or as the
voyeur to the patients exhibitionist (and vice versa), not only in absentia within the
structure of the patients fantasy life but manifestly and immediately in the countertransference that is complementary to the patients transference. A signicant part of
the clinical complexity of perversion and its treatment arises from the fact that the
same countertransference excitement (projected into an analyst) used by the patient
to actualize fantasies with destructive and defensive functions is also very gratifying
sexually. For example, Mr. Bs fantasy of exciting me not only destroyed my ability
to be his analystYou were too excited to help mebut also gratied his sadistic
sexuality. It follows, therefore, that a primary interpretive focus on the offensive
and defensive aspects of the patients relating through projective mechanisms does
not address the specic issue of unconscious sexual gratication in fantasy or in
the parallel enactments; and this uninterpreted gratication is crucially important
in sustaining perverse relating and in contributing to the difculty of supporting
psychic change through interpretation in perverse patients. In my work with Mr. B,
my abilities to be more contained and, I think, somewhat more containing of Mr. Bs
projections were greatly enhanced by my understanding that in interacting with Mr.
B manifestations of my conscious affection and excited discomforts might actually
be derivatives of, and undoubtedly were experienced by him as expressions of, my
perverse sexual excitement.
In the years following the movement into consciousness of the motorcycle
fantasy, Mr. B could occasionally recognize his wish to excite me and I was sometimes able to interpret in the transference his gratifying experience that he was
exciting me. During this latter part of the analysis, Mr. Bs fellatio compulsion
1
Ogden notes that perverse transferencecountertransference experiences are inevitably (to a
considerable degree) inaccessible to the analysts conscious awareness as they are unfolding (1996,
p. 1122). While this must be true, I think that the analysts use of clinical theory and technique is an
important factor in how well he perceives psychoanalytic data. The use of reverie (Bion, 1962) was
not among the techniques available to me at the time of Mr. Bs analysis and might be an alternative
approach, as suggested by Ogden, to understanding in the transferencecountertransference what I
am here locating more distinctly in the perverse countertransference.

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117

disappeared entirely; he became capable of sustained, productive, and satisfying

work; he established a good marriage; and in the end he could acknowledge his
dependence on and gratitude toward me. Mr. B also experienced a marked change
in the quality of his relationships: I no longer generate something exciting in a
person and use it to convince myself I like them. I nd someone I like and discover
what it is in them that is attractive. It is impossible to specify and weight the
importance of the multiple factors underlying the apparently enduring shifts in
Mr. Bs psychic functioning, but the insight associated with the eventual bringing
into consciousness of a powerful but unknown source of transference gratication
seems to have made it possible for Mr. B to choose to give up what he experienced
as my need to create excitement in an other; consequently, he allowed a more
real analytic relationship with me and became much more tolerant of depressive
affects, especially apparent during the termination period.
While it is true that, in practice, a mixture of complex factors determines the
analysts excited countertransferences, I wish to be clear that conceptually I am distinguishing perverse countertransferences from both erotic and erotized (Gabbard, 1991)
countertransferences. It will require a detailed parsing of sexual countertransference
experiences to begin to dene the phenomenological differences among these three
types of excited countertransferences, but there are inferential distinctions that can be
specied. I view erotic countertransference as sexual feeling arising in the context of a
transferencecountertransference conguration centering on whole-object love in the
analytic relationship, the countertransference sexual excitement being an integrated
aspect of the analysts love, whether it be understood essentially as his transference
or as a complementary response to the patients transference love. An erotized countertransference I understand to be sexual feeling that serves a defensive functionin
other words, sexual feeling used to hide underlying non-sexual conicts. Thus, an
erotized countertransference represents either a colluding response to overt sexualization in the transference or the analysts own defense against awareness of non-sexual
aspects of the transferencecountertransference. A perverse countertransference, as
described here, is a complementary reaction to a patients handling of sexual excitement by projective identication for purposes of defense, destruction, and gratication.
It is a response to hidden sexualization (Joseph, 1971); and in my experience perverse
countertransference, unlike erotic and erotized countertransferences, is most often
registered in the analyst as an impassioned but manifestly non-sexual responsefor
example, strong feelings of rage, affection, fascination, or other forms of overinvestment and overinterest. From this perspective, perverse countertransference is an
integral part of the structure of a transference perversion and is not necessarily limited
to manifestly non-sexual emotional activation but includes unconscious and hidden,
thus potentially conscious, sexual excitation.2
The experiences presented here that I now think of as perverse countertransferences were primarily responses to Mr. Bs actions and apparent inactions (passivity)
My experiences as a supervisor have offered some support of this assertion. Inquiries about the nature
of the countertransference when I perceive what I believe to be a perverse transference have resulted in
surprisingly frequent reports of excitement, sometimes described clearly as sexual. Davies (2001) gives
a detailed report of what I am calling perverse countertransference in a supervisee.
2

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STEPHEN D. PURCELL

toward me and not to the verbal content of his material, most of which was not
overtly sexual in nature. At least in part because my attention was focused preferentially on what Mr. B was saying and not on what he was doing in the transference,
my responses were surprising or even shocking to me, intense, and characterized
by a push within me toward re-action (e.g. in the tone of my interpretations, in my
phoning Mr. B, or in my silence or emotional disengagement)characteristics of
unconscious and unsymbolized reactions. These emotional experiences often had a
very forceful qualityboth in the sense of their being forced into my experience and
of their seeming irresistibleand they interfered with my ability to think, meaningfully, about what my reactions implied about my patient and about the immediate
state of the transference. Included in my unexpected reactions to Mr. B was an
affection that, even at the time it occurred, seemed unexpectedly intense and not
appropriate to what I knew about the state of the transferencecountertransference;
there were also the often-reported rage reaction and less intense feelings of irritation and anger with which I had to contend. Although countertransferences that are
impassioned, unexpected, and impelling in character are not necessarily responses
to perverse transferences, an analyst whose emotional reactions to his patient meet
these criteria might consider the possibility of an underlying perverse dynamic.
My speculation and tentative theorizing would be more persuasive if in the
analysis reported here I had, in fact, experienced conscious sexual excitement in the
countertransference; and, indeed, that I did not respond to Mr. Bs perverse transference enactments with conscious sexual feeling seems to require some explanation
if, in fact, these enactments represented the transferencecountertransference actualization of a fantasy of projective identication of sexual excitementan inference
from the motorcycle fantasy and other analytic data that seems quite plausible to me.
In the absence of conscious sexual feelings, it did not occur to me to wonder if there
was anything perverse about my responses; but in light of my current perspective
on the sexual dimension of analyzing perversion, I wonder if my experience of the
inappropriate affection forced upon me might have been a derivative, acceptable
to me, of an especially meaningful but consciously disallowed, perverse countertransference response. While it is, apparently, easier to think of myself as incapable
of such responses, I think there is something to gain in considering whether these
experiences in me were the tolerably sublimated (affection) and theoretically expectable (rage) conscious derivatives of an unconscious masochistic excitement. Might
my impassioned affection have been a symptomatic expression of what was more
fundamentally sexual excitement? Similarly, while my excited countertransference
experience of rage was complementary to an envious (narcissistic) attack on my
goodness might it simultaneously have functioned as a counter-resistance against a
masochistic response to my patients sadistic intrusion into my emotional life?
A more general way of framing this question is the following: if the analysts
complementary perverse excitement is a fundamental part of the patients fantasy
organizing the transference perversion, then does it follow that the analysts
conscious or unconscious sexual excitement is a typical element in the countertransference contribution to enactments occurring in the transference perversion?
That it might be so strikes me as quite likely, in part, because it is axiomatic that

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119

a perverse patient handling sexual excitement by projective identication will

attempt, sometimes successfully, to induce in the analyst the state of mind he needs
and wants to see in the analysti.e. sexual excitement, analogous to that which
was so clearly represented in Mr. Bs motorcycle fantasy. Furthermore, if perversion actually is a dimension of the human psyche in general, a temptation in the
mind common to us all (Chasseguet-Smirgel, 1983, p. 293), and especially if interaction is a necessary component of perverse resistances as it is in some narcissistic
resistances (Maldonado, 1999), we might expect the development of sexual countertransferences as an integral part of the analysis of a transference perversion. If my
perspective is valid, why is it that sexual excitement in the countertransference
is not more readily known and more frequently reported in the psychoanalysis
of perversion? It seems likely that the reasons have to do with both the analysts
psychology and his or her working theory.
Sexual countertransference responses are unconsciously avoided, generally
speaking, because of their accompanying pressure toward prohibited action;
and they are also conicted because of their connection with the incest taboo
(Gabbard, 1994b). Perverse countertransference excitement is additionally problematic because it carries with it connotations of immorality, illegitimacy, and
pathology; and analysts, despite our having the benet of personal analyses, are
neither free of conict over sexual feelings nor immune to the moralizing and
repressive functions for which the notion of perversion has been used by our
profession as well as by our larger culture. The deep-seated nature of perverse
responses and the anxiety associated with the regressive movement toward them
are undoubtedly additional factors contributing to their being avoided. These conicts and attitudes toward perverse countertransference will tend to keep sexual
excitementespecially that which occurs in response to manifestly non-sexual
materialunconscious or unreported when conscious.3
At the same time, I think a part of the limitation in analysts awareness of
sexual countertransferences in the psychoanalysis of perversion is a direct effect of
our clinical theory of treating perverse character pathology, theory that becomes as
a result of our continuous use of it in our daily work both a lens and a lter through
which analytic events are perceived and then reacted to emotionally (Purcell, 2004,
p. 648). While the concept of transference perversion includes the importance of
the patients hidden excitement (Joseph, 1971) and the sexualization of non-sexual
interactions, I believe that for many of us our working clinical theory implicitly
has supported the belief that perversion exists only in the mind of the patient,
not in the complementary countertransference and enactments ensuing from it;
and we are, of necessity, relatively insensitive to subtle, conicted experiences
that we do not expect. An important exception to this generalization is Ogdens
(1996) position, which, though rooted in theoretical assumptions different in
3
My inference is that some signicant portion of erotic and erotized countertransferences that are
known and reported is likely to be comprised of perverse countertransferences occurring in the
treatments of unrecognized perverse character pathology and evolving as part of a transference
perversion.

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STEPHEN D. PURCELL

some respects from mine, emphasizes the necessity of analyzing excitement in the
perverse transferencecountertransference.
Unless we have a high index of suspicion that our patients aggressive or passive
or provoking behaviors in the transference are not only defensive and destructive
but also unconsciously (sadistically) exciting to them and meant to excite us, it
is very unlikely that we will recognize countertransference affection, activation,
or anger as deriving from our (masochistic) excitementexcitement located not
only in the patients fantasy but also in actualized transferencecountertransference
enactments. A predominant theoretical understanding focused on the defensive and
destructive aspects of perverse mental functioning has led to the recognition (and
expectation) that complementary countertransference rage commonly occurs in the
psychoanalytic treatment of perversion; and because our working theory supports
the development and awareness of rage (and related feelings) to the relative exclusion of excitement in the countertransference, we are directed, powerfully, by our
theory-supported inferences about these countertransferences, toward the analysis
of defensive and destructive aspects of the transference perversion but not toward
the analysis of sexually gratifying elements of the analytic couples interactions
as we might be if our theory also led us to expect and detect countertransferential excitement. If our clinical theory of treating perversion explicitly includes the
notion of complementary perverse countertransference and its enactment, we might
be able at least to think about this and related possibilities more readily.
Conclusion

It is my impression that unconscious sexual gratication occupies an important

position in the transferencecountertransference experience evolving in the course
of analyzing perverse character pathology. This sexual gratication, when it goes
unrecognized, contributes to the difculty of effecting change psychoanalytically in
perverse characters because it acts as a kind of psychic glue holding the perverse
structures in place. While my primary intention has been to increase awareness of
the role of this sexual gratication in transferencecountertransference enactments
occurring in the analysis of perversion, and to expand our appreciation of the range
of expectable countertransferences that occur as part of a transference perversion to include the analysts excited countertransferences, I have also wondered in
passing if the organizing concept of transference perversion actually adds anything
of value to our clinical theory. The corresponding notion of transference neurosis,
though important historically in psychoanalysis, no longer has a prominent role in
most clinical discussions of which I am aware. The perspective that a pathological
mental structure (neurosis) comes to nd expression in the patients experience of
the transference relationship has, I think, been largely supplanted by concepts like
enactment (Jacobs, 1986) and the total transference (Joseph, 1985), which alert
analysts to the representations of the patients impulses, anxieties, and defenses in
non-verbal, relational, interactional, and countertransferential forms which exist
from the beginning of most analyses, not only as the culmination of an analytic
process in a transference neurosis.

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121

In the analysis reported here, it appears that the transferencecountertransference

congurations and enactments deriving from the core fantasy organizing the transference perversion were actually present from very near the beginning of the analysis;
and, if this observation is generalizable, it suggests that a heightened awareness of the
potential meanings of excited countertransferences and their enactments might assist
us in locating manifestations of perverse object-relating, including unconscious transference gratication, long before any conscious, perverse excitement is accessible. This
could be especially useful in the treatment of the quieter perversions and of unrecognized perverse character pathology. The data here also suggest that, to the extent that
the transference perversion must develop in the course of the analysis, important parts
of its evolution are the active participation of the analyst and its movement toward
consciousness in both participants. While a concept of transference perversion in strict
parallel to that of transference neurosis may not be a necessary part of our conceptualizing analytic process in the treatment of perversion, it seems thatas described by
Joseph, as dened by Etchegoyen, and as more explicitly expanded here to include
perverse countertransferencesit remains a useful device to help the analyst hold in
mind the multiple dimensions of an extremely complex pathology and of a technically
very difcult treatment.
The analysts excitement in the patients fantasy and/or actualized through transferencecountertransference enactments is an essential element in the analysis of
perversion and giving it a more prominent position in our clinical theory will support
the recognition, proper development, and better containment of these excited countertransferences, partly by offsetting the analysts prohibitions against awareness of
the perverse nature of countertransference reactions and partly by affecting the cognition of analysts in ways that support more sensitive and discerning apprehension
of these countertransference experiences. Expanded awareness and understanding of
analysts excited reactions, including sexual responses, to perverse transferences will
support better understanding and more effective psychoanalysis of perverse psychic
structures, enhance our ability to distinguish perverse transferences from their erotic
counterparts with which they are sometimes confused, and perhaps reduce the
pressure in analysts, fueled by excitement, to act defensively and destructively.
Translations of summary
Die Erregung des Analytikers in der Analyse von Perversionen. Der Autor ist berzeugt, dass die
unbewusste sexuelle Erregung in der bertragung und Gegenbertragung ein besonders problematischer
Aspekt in der Analyse einer perversen Charakterpathologie ist und dass der perversen sexuellen Gratikation
ein hherer Stellenwert in der klinischen Theorie der Perversionsanalyse zukommen sollte, als er ihr bislang
stillschweigend durch die routinemige Konzentration des Analytikers auf die defensive und destruktive
Dynamik der Perversion zuteil wurde. Er stellt klinisches Material aus der Analyse eines perversen Patienten
vor, das die Rolle der Erregung in der bertragungsperversion, die in dieser Analyse etabliert wurde, illustriert;
und er vertritt die These, dass sich gratizierendes perverses Agieren in der bertragungsperversion nicht
nur als bewusste oder unbewusste Erregung in der bertragung uern kann, sondern mitunter beraus
deutlich auch als Erregung des Analytikers. Der Autor ist der Meinung, dass eine klinische Theorie, die
dem Analytiker hilft, seine erregten Reaktionen als perverse Gegenbertragungen zu verstehen das heit
als evozierte Erregung, die der sexuellen Komponente einer perversen bertragung komplementr ist ,
ihn auch dabei untersttzt, die gratizierende, perverse Erregung in der bertragung, in der sie mit grtem
Gewinn analysiert werden kann, zu lokalisieren und ber sie nachzudenken. Abschlieend diskutiert er einige
der Grnde, warum Analytiker perverse Gegenbertragungen verleugnen, unterdrcken oder ihnen auf andere
Weise ausweichen, wodurch sie zur Aufrechterhaltung perverser Widerstnde beitragen.

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STEPHEN D. PURCELL

La excitacin del analista en el anlisis de la perversin. El autor sostiene que la excitacin sexual
inconsciente en la transferencia y contratransferencia es un aspecto especialmente problemtico en el
anlisis de la patologa del carcter perverso y que la graticacin sexual perversa merece una posicin
de mayor importancia en la teora clnica sobre el anlisis de la perversin de la que le ha sido atribuida
tcitamente a causa del enfoque habitual de los analistas sobre las dinmicas defensivas y destructivas de la
perversin. El autor presenta material clnico del anlisis de un paciente perverso que ilustra el papel de la
excitacin en la transferencia perversa y sostiene que los enactments perversos graticantes que se verican
en la perversin transferencial pueden aparecer no solo como excitacin consciente o inconsciente en la
transferencia sino tambin, y a veces muy claramente, como excitacin del analista. El autor sugiere que el
uso de una teora clnica que ayude al analista a comprender su propia excitacin como contratransferencia
perversa es decir como respuesta complementaria al componente sexual de una transferencia perversa
consentira localizar y pensar sobre la excitacin perversa y graticante en la transferencia, donde es
analizada con ms provecho. Por ltimo discute algunas de las razones por las que los analistas podran
negar, suprimir, o evitar de otra manera contratransferencias perversas y al hacerlo contribuir a que subsistan
resistencias de naturaleza perversa.
Lexcitation de lanalyste dans lanalyse de la perversion. Lauteur considre que lexcitation sexuelle
inconsciente dans le transfert et le contre-transfert est un aspect particulirement problmatique de lanalyse
de la pathologie du caractre pervers, et que cette satisfaction sexuelle perverse mrite une place plus centrale
dans la thorie clinique de lanalyse de la perversion, comparativement celle qui lui est tacitement assigne
dans lintrt habituel que portent les analystes la dynamique destructive et dfensive de la perversion.
Lauteur prsente du matriel clinique issu de lanalyse dun patient pervers, qui illustre le rle de lexcitation
dans la perversion transfrentielle qui stablit au cours de lanalyse ; il considre que les mises en acte
(enactment) de satisfaction perverse qui ont lieu dans la perversion transfrentielle peuvent apparatre, non
seulement comme une excitation consciente et inconsciente dans le transfert, mais galement, et parfois plus
clairement, comme une excitation de lanalyste. Lauteur suggre que lutilisation dune thorie clinique
qui soutient lanalyste dans son effort pour comprendre ses rponses excites comme des manifestations
du contre-transfert pervers savoir comme faisant partie dune complmentarit excitatoire par rapport
la composante sexuelle du transfert pervers peut laider reprer et penser la satisfaction de lexcitation
perverse dans le transfert, cest--dire l o il est le plus utile de lanalyser. Enn, lauteur discute certaines
des raisons pour lesquelles les analystes peuvent dnier, supprimer ou viter dautres faons les mouvements
contre-transfrentiels pervers, contribuant ainsi au renforcement des rsistances perverses.
Leccitazione dellanalista nellanalisi della perversione. Lautore ritiene che leccitazione sessuale
inconscia nel transfert e controtransfert sia un aspetto particolarmente problematico dellanalisi della
patologia caratteriale perversa; considera che la graticazione di una sessualit perversa meriti una
posizione di maggior rilievo nella teoria clinica circa lanalisi della perversione di quella che le stata
tacitamente attribuita a causa della maggiore attenzione conferita dagli analisti alla funzione difensiva e
allaspetto distruttivo della perversione. Lautore presenta materiale clinico tratto dallanalisi di un paziente
perverso che illustra il ruolo delleccitazione nel transfert perverso stabilitosi in questa analisi, e sostiene
che gli enactment graticanti che si vericano nella perversione transferale possono apparire non solo come
eccitazione conscia o inconscia nel transfert ma anche, a volte con particolare chiarezza, come eccitazione
dellanalista. Lautore propone che il ricorso a una teoria clinica che aiuti lanalista a comprendere la
propria eccitazione come controtransfert perverso vale a dire come risposta complementare alla
componente sessuale di un transfert perverso consentir la localizzazione e la pensabilit delleccitazione
perversa graticante dove meglio questa possa essere analizzata, e cio allinterno del transfert. Lautore
esplora inne alcuni dei motivi per cui gli analisti potrebbero denegare, reprimere o evitare in altro modo
controtransfert perversi, contribuendo in tal modo a mantenere resistenze di natura perversa.

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