A sexual violation in an analytic treatment and its personal and theoretical aftermath

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MURIEL DIMEN, Ph.D.

one open to me and when a suitable speaking invitation came my way, 

that I was, to my surprise, ready to tell (Dimen 2005a). (The context for 

my seizing the day was of course thick: a third treatment relationship, 

other major life events, and the like. But that is another story.)

As meaning returned, shame receded. Before writing this article, I 

dwelled somewhere on that continuum from seduction through exploita-

tion to abuse—neither thought nor sense, only a wish echoing in a para-

doxically shame-filled vacuum: “this isn’t happening.” Performatively, 

shame intensifies itself: you are ashamed, therefore you feel you deserve 

shame. Abjection (Kristeva, 1982) solidifies, and you prefer to go on as 

though nothing has happened. As I spoke out, however, my shame, 

which marred those silent decades and even the first couple of tellings of 

this story, gradually subsided, even if it resurges now and again. I have 

been fortified by the praise and, yes, the criticism called forth by these 

tellings: speaking despite my own and others’ (willful and unconscious) 

efforts to stop me, I have dined so well at the banquet of respect that 

shame no longer persecutes me. Rather, it has become interesting.

On Not Naming Dr. O

I would like to say that my shame, having dissipated, no longer demands 

vengeance. When I began this project, Schadenfreude beckoned: I did 

indeed fantasize the malicious triumph of naming Dr. O. I cannot imag-

ine doing so now. No, at this moment, I rue the whole damn thing: if I 

have emerged from this enigmatic treatment intact, I am also scarred. Not 

only that: some of this grief may, sad to say, contain traces of that self-

sacrificial love that recoiled from injuring the one I loved and the rela-

tionship I treasured, the loyalty that prevented me from connecting the 

dots during that three decades’ silence.

At the same time, though, my discretion is pragmatic. Although it 

would be dignified and ethical to say I want to protect his family and col-

leagues, I am not so noble. Were I to name him, attention would flock to 

his character and devolve into gossip. I have needed to tell this story for 

personal reasons, but in the course of doing so have come upon matters 

vital to psychoanalytic work, and I want the focus to be on them. This 

story bares complications that trouble us in daily clinical life, as well as 

mysteries in how we think about mind, relationship, and treatment.

Consider my appellation for him. “O” situates our working relationship 

in psychoanalytic tradition. It conjures the putative inventor of the cure 

we use, and puts that praxis into question. “O” honors Bertha Pappen-

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SEXUAL VIOLATION  IN AN ANALYTIC TREATMENT 

67

heim’s determination in treatment, and her independence and originality 

in the rest of her life. This sobriquet also summons the sexual transfer-

ence/countertransference on which Anna O’s analysis with Josef Breuer 

foundered. It asks: If sexual acting out, or enactment, is so venerable as 

to be inevitable, what becomes of us? How do we ensure that analysts 

stand by those whom they have harmed?

By dubbing him Dr. O, I also wish to evoke the protagonist of The 

Story of O (Declos [Réage], 1965), the gendered power dynamics the 

novel depicts, the thralldom of sexuality, and the novel’s place in con-

temporary sexual and feminist history. Perhaps by reversal—naming him 

after her—I am attempting to turn the tables, which, as you saw in Part 

II, I literally tried to do one day. But I also mean to ponder the conun-

drum of one’s own contribution to one’s own suffering. The Story of O 

has two endings, in one of which the protagonist, O, seeks her master’s 

permission to kill herself. At this moral and clinical juncture, feminist and 

psychoanalytic interests meet. How, asks feminist thought (e.g., Benja-

min, 1988; Butler, 1990), are women complicit with their own subordina-

tion?  Mutatis mutandis, psychoanalysis is equally fascinated: how do 

people play into their own tragedies? In this personal article with theo-

retical implications, I have struggled to maintain this moral tension: On 

one hand, I call both of us to account; on the other, I call a spade a 

spade: the guy hurt me.

Psychoanalysis on the Spot

In the most classic way, an analyst hurts the person he’s supposed to 

help and he won’t even talk about it. And it’s not even a patient who’s 

complaining. Or, rather, the complainant is indeed a patient but is also an 

analyst who has ideas about the ins and outs of mistakes, their rectifica-

tion, and their erasure; who knows something about our profession’s 

sexually addled history; and whose authority merits attention. If it were 

just a patient crying foul, we could sympathize but also protect ourselves 

by splitting: us against her, analysts against patient, good against bad. 

Perhaps the analyst was doing a bad job; because good psychoanalysis 

does not include this sort of mistreatment, it is therefore, properly speak-

ing, not implicated. Or maybe the analyst was a rotten apple; throw him 

out and we are safe. Or, if worse comes to worst, the patient is a bad egg. 

Too bad. But we are fine.

But we—a collectivity to which I belong—know better: the problem of 

sexual infraction is endemic. We have not, as yet, made it go away, and 

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