Un incesto professionale: la seduzione sessuale e amorosa in psicoanalisi

The topic on seductive relationship between therapist and patient is vast and discomforting and comprises numerous levels of analysis, ethical, technical, medical, legal and historical, that inevitability intermingle with psychoanalytical vicissitudes such as the conscious and the unconscious transference and countertransference. Furthermore, there is a major risk to use, in a defensive way, one level of analysis against another i.e. invoke the need to comprehend the unconscious dynamics of a concrete situation of abuse, in order to elude taking sides; or, on the contrary, draw on moral issues to avoid the topic and hence keep away from theoretical and clinical investigations on the searing subject of sexuality and therapy. Whatever the case may be, sexual relationships between therapists and patients are always to be considered as a professional incest, a serious and harmful pathology, yet very frequent. The insidious violence consists, like in the case of incest, in hampering the recognition of the wrongs the victim has suffered and their meaning.;

Simona Argentieri Bondi, Un incesto professionale: la seduzione sessuale e amorosa in psicoanalisi in "PSICOANALISI" 2/2007, pp 61-75, DOI: