Epilogue - 2025.

I began this blog with the intention of making sense 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, when the therapist - Kit - refused to acknowledge that what had happened during therapy, though no rules were broken, though he had done nothing wrong, had nevertheless left me feeling suicidal.

Underlying this is my question; what makes rules that are maintained to 'protect' the client, be 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? 

This exploration has become my own therapy, but more importantly this became a quest to find answers for others. Because the complaint that terrifies therapists more than any other is sexual misconduct. 

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 sexual 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...

As with every other subject a client may bring, as therapists, we go there...Avoiding a subject strikes me as a kind of dishonesty? And that dishonesty, is the worm in the apple. Ignorance, is only unforgivable 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 contact that really messes people up; when is the erotic 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. It is only that way when it is used with those aims in mind...Even as I write this, I can understand Kit's apparent point of view - he heard my voice recording as an attempt to seduce him. 

• Please feel free to make up your own mind about that, the recording is at the top of this blog as one of the pages.

Seduction creates an under-current that could be pleasant or creepy. But is an attempt to seduce someone, always sexual misconduct? Bear in mind I was the client, and it wasn't my intention to seduce. 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 - like a salamander in flames! I didn't tell him even after the recording that I'd felt as if he'd been flirting. I dared not to do this. I didn't give him the whole story because his reaction to half of it was bad enough, Kit had thought that it was obvious that our relationship was fixed and frozen as therapist and client, so how could I ever imagine otherwise, his answer because he is a therapist and I should know better sounded like avoiding any responsibility.

Seduction is a communication and ignorance creates the problem, and there is also noise in the system - Factor X aside - communication is a continuum between tentative and obvious, and what is being communicated as seductive could be between flattering, or a threat. The problem occurs when the therapist cannot bring what is happening into consciousness and awareness (maintaining ignorance). First there is a cognitive dissonance which becomes coercive as the client contorts around the inexplicable, altered reality. Lack of awareness and honesty from the therapist is more harmful than one might expect...ambiguity and the lack of clarity also 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...for there is no reality here. Not until the therapist is willing and able to value the client's reciprocal honesty. See, as far as I can tell it is the therapist's role is to be the more emotionally literate and emotionally confident person in the room, to model for the client a deeper awareness of emotion...Working against this, I see a couple of cultural artefacts in therapy that create problems. Beginning with the idea that a client feels erotic feelings to disrupt therapy. This is a bad enough belief in itself! The next major failing in my view is the rule that self disclosure from the therapist is going to be detrimental to the therapeutic frame, and cause therapy to end! In the collaborative, postmodern uplands of therapy, cultural artefacts are deconstructed and such prohibitions on honesty are not fetishized, for which I am eternally grateful. 

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 that their reputation is being damaged, fear having to deal with a complaint, a risk to their job...it goes on and on, this ocean of irrational and rational fear. So it makes total sense that both therapist and client can 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. 

The cultural artefacts in therapy can create problems, and a therapist who starts, merrily brushing away, will trust their own fantasy that no harm has been done, and that may be so...

Yet no good has been done either.

Mutually erotic feelings and desires can be managed, bless Father Freud, his concept of sublimation is a way to look at things, 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 a choice, either 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...

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.