Sexual Boundary Trouble in Psychoanalysis: Clinical Perspectives on Muriel Dimen’s Concept of the “Primal Crime”

Description

Inspired by the clinical and ethical contributions of Muriel Dimen (1942-2016), a prominent feminist anthropologist and relational psychoanalyst, Sexual Boundary Trouble in Psychoanalysis challenges the established psychoanalytic and mental health consensus about the sources and appropriate management of sexual boundary violations (SBVs). Gathering contributions from an exciting range of analysts working at the cutting edge of the field, this book shatters normative professional guidelines by focusing on the complicity and hypocrisy of professional groups, while at the same time raising for the first time the taboo subject of the ordinary practicing clinician’s unconscious professional ambivalence and potentially "rogue" sexual subjectivity. Sexual Boundary Trouble in Psychoanalysis uncovers the roots of SBV in the institutional origins and history of psychoanalysis as a profession. Exploring Dimen’s concept of the psychoanalytic "primal crime," which is in some ways constitutive of the profession, and the inherently unstable nature of interpersonal and professional "boundaries," Sexual Boundary Trouble in Psychoanalysis breaks new ground in the continuing struggle of psychoanalysis to reconcile itself with its liminal social status and morally ambiguous practice. It will appeal to all psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists. Cover Endorsement Half Title Series Information Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Table of contents Contributors Acknowledgments Chapter 1 Introduction: From “Eew” to We: an overview of Muriel Dimen’s contribution to psychoanalytic ethics Part 1: Muriel Dimen’s “Lapsus linguae”: from Eew! to We! The primal crime The concept of a sexual boundary The difficulties of ethical self-reflection in the group Searching for the responsible “We”: the problem of love in psychoanalysis Part 2: boundary trouble in the psychoanalytic process Part 3: boundary trouble in the analytic community References Part 1 The primal crime Chapter 2 Lapsus linguae, or a slip of the tongue?: A sexual violation in an analytic treatment and its personal and theoretica Introduction: the hug and the hard-on I. The sounds of silence Dr. O’s help: mourning my mother Word and deed Sotto voce Pre-Oedipal delight, Oedipal shame II. Desire and the incest taboo Dumbshows of desire Intersubjectivizing Oedipus The analyst’s refusal and the patient’s desire Splitting the difference III. Conclusion: the problem that won’t go away On not naming Dr. O Psychoanalysis on the spot A psychoanalytic transvestite Primal crime Notes References Part 2 Boundary trouble in the psychoanalytic process Chapter 3 Shadows that corrupt: Present absences in the psychoanalytic process Erasures of the containing third The present absence of institutionalized power Erasures of the patient Displaced perverse scenarios Direct perverse scenarios Other shadows Erasing the realness of transference Erasing the authentic feeling of love Erasing the multiplicity of experience Conclusion Notes References Chapter 4 Sex and ethics: Protecting an enchanted space Why not sex? Transgression The analyst’s role and ethics As-if Transference Breaking the spell with passion An analyst in love Our patients are not ours to have Post-Oedipal desire The analyst’s desire Notes References Chapter 5 The analyst’s narcissism and the denial of limits References Chapter 6 Unraveling: Betrayal and the loss of goodness in the analytic relationship1 A tear in the fabric of time Losing one’s past Complicated beginnings Dismay in the countertransference Community “disappearances” Conclusion Notes References Part 3 Boundary trouble in the analytic community Chapter 7 Don’t tell anyone Notes References Chapter 8 Dissociation among psychoanalysts about sexual boundary violations1 The absolutist position The “supportive-of-sex-with-patients” position The “empathic-sentimental” position Notes References Chapter 9 Do we really need boundaries? References Index