Epilogue - 2025.

I began this blog with the intention of making sense of what had happened to me during therapy. I listened to all my sessions - which I'd recorded - and I set about publishing the transcripts here, because the therapist - Kit - refused to acknowledge that what had happened during therapy, though no rules were broken, though he had done nothing wrong, therapy had nevertheless left me feeling suicidal.

Underlying this is my question; what is it about the rules for protecting the client, that makes them potentially so damaging?

In October 2023 I decided to take this a whole step further - I set out my intention to explore the role of Eros in therapy, and more importantly how therapists can navigate their own fears and sense of vulnerability when Eros becomes the third party in the therapy session.

The question now turns towards power dynamics, how can a client - who already feels vulnerable, recovering from horrible life events, unsure of themselves, identity already damaged - raise their fears and suspicions about a therapist in a way that feels safe and fair? 

Especially when no rules appear to have been broken....

This exploration has become my own therapy, but more importantly this is a quest to find answers for others. Because the complaint that terrifies therapists more than any other is sexual misconduct. And the therapist's reactions from that fear can destroy any chance of candour and transparency.

Here is a statement - because I wish to be clear in my own mind, and also so that you know where I'm coming from - Eros does not inevitably lead to sexual misconduct. So thoughts, feelings, dreams, fantasies, hopes, fears, honesty expressed in words is not sexual misconduct. Obviously sexual behaviour is not part of dialogic, talking therapy, so physical contact, or the idea of healing sex (trust me this has been suggested by some therapists) isn't something most of us are qualified to contemplate.

My definition of erotic misconduct is an addition to the obvious:

• Sexual misconduct between a therapist and client occurs when an underlying erotic tone, theme, or incident, is placed beyond verbal exploration by the therapist...

Avoiding a subject in therapy strikes me as a kind of dishonesty? And that dishonesty, is the worm in the apple. Dishonesty should be distinguished from ignorance though. Ignorance is the absence of knowledge, and it may or may not cause problems. Ignorance becomes something else when a person ignores a problem; when a person refuses to learn from what happened. And a part of this - for future posts - is to ask, what is it about sexual content that really messes people up - specifically to ask, when is the erotic in therapy a violation and a betrayal? 

And this blog will resolutely remain open to all, there will be no overt sexual content, which echoes exactly the point I'm making; Eros in itself isn't dangerous or corrupting, or exploitative unless it is used without taking into account feelings and needs. 

Even as I write this, I can understand Kit's apparent point of view;  he interpreted my Samhain recording as an attempt to seduce him?

Seduction creates an under-current that could be pleasant or creepy. 

But I was the client, and it wasn't my intention to seduce. I needed clarity. I had believed that Kit was flirting with me in the beginning of our sessions, and I'd thought it dangerous to both of us if I told him how it made me feel! I felt like a salamander in flames! He asked several times "what made you think that I'd break the rules of therapy?". I answered honesty each time, " I didn't think that you would break any rules!" I could not tell him that I'd felt as if he'd been flirting with me. I dared not to do this. I didn't give him the whole story because his reaction to just half of it was bad enough.

Kit had thought that it was obvious, and set in stone that our relationship was fixed and frozen as therapist and client, so how could I ever imagine otherwise? His reply always felt as if he was saying he is a therapist and I should know better. I saw it as his desperate attempt to reframe his avoidance of any responsibility.

Seduction is a communication, a way of behaving that signifies a need and desire for radical closeness. Ignorance about how to treat this communication with respect creates the problem, and there was also noise in the system - Factor X!

Communication is a continuum between tentative and obvious, and what is being communicated as seductive could be also be interpreted as flattering, or a threat. The problem occurs when the therapist cannot bring what is happening into awareness because what is happening doesn't fit their preferred reality. This conflict between what's happening and what they believe should happen causes a cognitive dissonance which becomes coercive as both client and therapist contort around the therapist's inexplicable, altered reality. It is the therapist's duty and responsibility to be aware, because a lack of awareness and honesty can cause harm. It creates a feeling of ambiguity. The absence of clarity keeps hope and fear alive, it prevents either person getting a true picture of what is happening, it prevents the person affected by Eros - should this be one sided - from being able to separate from the Beloved. There is no stable and trustworthy reality here. It is the therapist's role to be the more emotionally literate and emotionally confident person in the room, to model for the client a deeper awareness of emotion.

But there are theories and beliefs within therapy that create problems. Beginning with the idea that a client feels erotic feelings to disrupt therapy. This idea created by Freud is a bad enough belief in itself! It positions the client as responsible for the therapist being unable to help the client, not the therapy! The next major failing is the rule that self disclosure from the therapist is almost always going to be detrimental to the therapeutic frame.

In the postmodern uplands of therapy, ideas such as resistance are deconstructed.

And such strict prohibitions on honesty are not fetishized, for which I am eternally grateful. Therapy is a collaboration, not a secular religion.

As therapists we need to consider Eros because when it is the third presence in the therapy session, the sensations are very likely to close down any rational thought. There is a fear of going too far, of saying the wrong thing, of something being misunderstood, and misconstrued, and the danger of feelings getting really hurt, no one wants to do any harm! 

A therapist will fear being stalked, or their reputation being damaged, fear of having to deal with a complaint, a risk to their job...it goes on and on. There is an ocean of irrational and rational fear. So it makes total sense that both therapist and client feel an overwhelming need to brush feelings and energies 'under the carpet'. 

Especially as there is a sweet spot where the impossibility acts as an intensifier. 

And a therapist who starts, merrily brushing away, will trust their own fantasy that no harm is being done, and that may be so...

Yet no good has been done either.

Mutually erotic feelings and desires can be managed. Freud, who created a lot of the language that acts against collaboration in therapy also imported (from alchemy) the concept sublimation. This is a more positive way to look at Eros, there are many others. From my collaborative perspective, the only thing that matters is that a common preference is forged. It is unethical to do otherwise! 

Ultimately, Eros is about transcendence. Kit and I had an opportunity to turn whatever was in the room with us into something that gave us both wings - metaphorically speaking - and that could have taken many, many forms.

Or we could both treat it as a threat..

I was aware - after the Brian Thorne debacle - that he'd take it as a threat.

Anyway, an exploration of Eros in therapy...As with all things therapy, no single answer is right,  yet there will be some good guiding principles to find. So  here I am, aiming to describe how and why it is preferable and possible to honour Eros, and eventually how to use Eros in therapy. But, let's be clear, if physical, sexual contact is going to be the inevitable outcome of Eros (as it sometimes is) this blog must also explore how to end one contract and start another, how to negotiate new ethical pathways.

There, I've been direct and quite blunt. 

I think the most important question for me when I started writing this blog was to answer the question -  why would a well trained, card carrying member of the most prestigious of our various psychotherapy ethical bodies, react as he did? 

Naïve moralizing is an accurate description, but it doesn't provide an explanation. 

I think the difference between Kit and I is that I trust in the heart-essence of Eros, as transcendent whilst he seemed to see it as transgression . He saw the crossing offered by Eros as a descent into the unrefined and regressive mire of emotions, whilst I was looking across the edge of the known universe outward ever, into the unknown. I expected Eros to bring creativity and emotional literacy, he expected Eros to bring nothing but tantrums and trouble. Not unsurprisingly, I got - very controlled - tantrums from him, and he has my exploration of the unknown, recorded as this journey in words. Should he ever find it of course...

So, let's go back to the core reason, and motivation for this blog. When I left his room the final time I was suicidal...I had the plan, I had the means. I was practically hallucinating as I left the room. I was at the edge of a type of thinking I'd seen in my son when he was heading into psychosis. Like him I'd been taken there by grief and despair. And like him I'd experienced life events that had shattered my identity.

Death is often on the other side of this. 

And I was brought here by how a psychotherapist had acted towards me...

I've taken back his word- transgression, I take it and wear it with pride. 

When I first decided to publish this blog it was in opposition to fear, and it was to protest the effect of the power dynamic to silence me. I have self-silencing as a default driver of course, it felt that I should not write, because I felt that being honest would hurt him. The part of me that would hold onto pain out of fear of contact with fear, made me want to forget and ignore - avoid and deny - to shut off my feelings, my insights, my experience. I felt the danger of thin ice, the feeling that I could fall into the black and inky infinite cold, that simply questioning would make things worse.

I conquered it the first time through honesty, telling him how I felt. 

But then for him to make it unspeakable? 

But I've experienced that kind of shut-down before - Never again.

Instead I decided to harvest,

thresh and cook. 

Because 

Love is precious.

And.

Life is short.

Truth matters.