The Erotics of Knowing: A Neglected Contribution to Analytic Erotism

Abstract

An erotics of knowing is posited that comprises embodied aspects of psychological and emotional closeness, and derives not from transference dynamics but from psychological and emotional intimacy—both component and consequence of the analytic process. The experience of knowing and being known is invested with erotism via its interpenetrative and interreceptive aspects; regardless of gender, to know the other is to enter a hidden interior “space” that represents that person’s embodied inner world. Yet the interrogation of the intrinsic relationship between knowing and loving is stunningly absent from the psychoanalytic literature. This historical neglect is traced to a split in the discourse presaged by Freud’s essay on transference love, which distinguishes between the qualified reality of the erotic transference and the de-erotized but “real” construct of the “analytic love” relationship. A more recent split relocates erotism to the maternal transference, divesting it of aggression and oedipal sexuality. These splits constitute a vigorous collective defense against engaging with the erotics of knowing: from Oedipus to Genesis, our forbidden fruit.