Too Hot to Handle? Working with Erotic Charge

When the erotic enters the therapy room we can be swept by strong emotions - arousal, disgust, enchantment, love, hate. This is complex, often subtle work, demanding integrity and rigour. In her blog Allison Priestman courageously formulates the unspoken dilemmas body psychotherapists face when dealing with the erotic and suggests that by accepting it as natural, and inevitable, we can normalise working with the erotic – and even recentre the erotic as the work itself.

This short blog is drawn from an article of the same title, which was printed in Psychotherapy and Politics International, September 2019, and from the workshops and webinars that I have run on the erotic, for the past nine years.