Publications and Presentations Announcement by Janine de Peyer (USA)
Unspoken Rhapsody: Female Erotic Countertransference and the Dissociation of Desire
(2022). Psychoanalytic Perspectives, 19(1): 1-19, doi.org/10.1080/1551806X.2021.2000798
Why is so little written about the female analyst’s sexual desire? Presenting a case where an older, cisgendered, heterosexual female analyst is unmoored by erotic stirrings toward her younger, cisgendered, heterosexual male patient, de Peyer challenges cultural and gender prohibitions against the acknowledgment of female analytic erotic arousal. Can the female analyst be both maternal and sexual? Engaging the complexities of an intersubjective collision between the analyst’s desire and the patient’s apparent absence of desire, this paper explores the emergence of dissociative transference/countertransference dynamics, along with culturally embedded associations to gender, power, the incest taboo, and the potential for ethical boundary violation.
Desire as Gateway to Interconnectedness: Reply to Burton and Harris
(2022). Psychoanalytic Perspectives, 19(1): 40-45, doi.org/10.1080/1551806X.2021.2000797
Response to commentaries by Noelle Burton and Adrienne Harris which examine possible influences of hormonal involvement in the analyst’s capacity to contain sexual desires toward patients, and the transformational potential of the convergence between erotic elements from the analyst’s personal history and the patient’s projections. The possible defensive function of heightened sexual arousal is explored, as well as its capacity to serve as conduit to the attainment of transcendental interconnectedness.
Portals through Liminal Space: Commentary on Shapiro and Marks-Tarlow’s “Varieties of Clinical Intuition”
(2021). Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 31(3): 294-301, doi.org/10.1080/10481885.2021.1902738
In this commentary of Yakov Shapiro and Terry Marks-Tarlow’s “Varieties of Clinical Intuition,” I discuss the clinical implications of their integrative model of intuition, examining both the value and potential hazards of moments of local (sensory-based) and nonlocal (non-sensory-based) intuitive knowing. While considering the desire to enhance one’s own natural intuitive capacity, I explore the riches and potential complications faced by clinicians whose personal boundaries are pierced by their patients’ accurate intuitive dreams.
Extraordinary Knowing: Case Studies of Bipersonal Communication
(2021). William Alanson White Psychoanalytic Society, Colloquium Series, online, October 15.
More frequently than we may realize, the invisible psychic veil ‘separating’ analyst and patient is pierced by an uncanny exchange or moment of anomalous transmission. Such moments often defy sensory involvement, as with telepathic dreams. De Peyer presents case material illustrating both the clinical dilemmas and transcendent opportunities proffered by such windows into the unconscious.
Clinical Approaches of Exceptional Experiences
(2022). British Psychological Society, 6th International Expert Meeting, London, May 13-14.
What role does anomalous cognition play in the analyst’s intuition? This presentation will illustrate a moment when the analyst’s ’hunch’ unlocks a patient’s lie, a lie that was keeping the patient locked in a paralyzing depression. When confronted on the lie, the patient was then able to face her shame and resolve her double bind. When does unconscious communication engage a telepathic level of transmission? And what relation does the analyst’s imagination have to the shared unconscious?
Skating on Thin Ice: Clinical Dilemmas with the Uncanny
(2022). Psychotherapy Section Review (British Psychological Society), 67: 62-77.
As part of the British Psychological Society’s International Special Issue on clinical approaches to exceptional experiences (Ex E), this paper illustrates challenges that may arise when anomalous forms of communication occur within the clinical dyad.
Janine de Peyer, LCSW
New York, NY
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