Erotic terror: Male patients’ horror of the early maternal erotic transference

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Abstract
There is a particular terror that many male patients experience and often flee from as they approach feelings associated with the early maternal erotic transference. While pre- oedipal regression stirs degrees of anxiety in all men (Tyson, 1982), the primal fear of intimacy experienced by schizoid males may provoke the terror of annihilation. In this paper, I will review and integrate our understanding of the maternal erotic transference (Wrye & Welles, l989) and maternal erotic countertransference (Welles & Wrye, 1991), to illuminate the nature and implications of this "erotic terror" for male patients and their analysts. In brief clinical examples, I will illustrate a neurotic male's muted entry into shifting preoedipal and oedipal maternal erotic transference, and compare and contrast this with the appearance of the MET and resistances to preoedipal erotic terror in a more disturbed male analysand. The maternal erotic transference has its roots in the mother and baby's earliest sensual contacts, though we have also focused on it in the late pre-oedipal period. By erotic we mean all of the tender, sensual, romantic wishes existing alongside of the sadistic, aggressive and masochistic wishes that arise in the transference. We propose a broad view of maternal erotic transference (MET) to include all manner of sensual bodily fantasies in relation to the analyst. These are expressed in concerns with messing, smearing, poking, exposing, together with fantasies of putting together, getting inside, pouring, patting, and making. The fantasies of making a baby do not represent articulated oedipal, triadic fantasies reflecting genital strivings, but rather the more primitive fantasies typical of the preoedipal period such as fantasies of cloacal birth and babies made from mud, food or feces. All these pre-oedipal, sensual bodily feelings are more diffuse than the later more organized and genitally focussed oedipal erotic feelings, although the later are constructed from and subsume these early primitive erotic feelings. We have posited three basic dynamic aspects of the maternal erotic transference: the first is the sensual reciprocity between the baby and the mother3 from birth around such anal issues as toileting, enemas, and fantasies of cloacal birth. The second dynamic aspect of MET is that it bridges the transition from the early dyadic pan-zonal, sensual and aggressive bodily erotism to triadic oedipal, genital-sexual relations. For boys, it includes the advances and retreats between rivalry for mother as the romantic, oedipal love object, and the apparently safer yet more identity-threatening mergers of preoedipal relations. The latter preoedipal erotic terror for males is the focus of this paper. The third element of the MET for both male and female patients, is the developmental imperative to establish an integrated view of the mother as a living whole object. When it is successful, this developmental need is met by the mother's earlier sensual ministrations to the baby, the continuity and consistency of which help the baby to experience a sense of wholeness. In psychoanalysis a similar process takes place. The consistency and continuity of the conduct of the therapist fosters in the patient a sense of the wholeness of the therapist and of the self. The maternal erotic transference may first manifest itself in concrete fantasies about the real parts of the body of the therapist. These primitive fantasies are typically inhibited by "erotic horror" and by the shame and
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