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

52 

MURIEL DIMEN, Ph.D.

another person” (692) while stressing the “peculiar paradox built into this 

wish to find one’s completion in the regard of the Other” (693).

Betwixt and between, desire tends toward the cryptic, a quality at-

tended to in several psychoanalytic traditions (with which I wish Dr. O 

had been more familiar). Winnicott (1971) and Khan (1974) place it in a 

private self that, to one’s pleasure and regret, no one else can access. 

Laplanche (1976), in turn, deems it an enigma. Beamed from the mater-

nal (or, as one might now emend it, parental) unconscious—always 

already sexual—(Kristeva, 1983), desire registers in the infant’s psychic 

reality as an “enigmatic message” that, in its muteness (Stein, 1998), 

eludes the promised clarity of the talking cure.

Desire’s wordlessness often reduces us to bumbling idiots. Yet (or 

therefore), analysts need to create a way at least to talk about this “alien 

internal entity” (Laplanche, 1976), whether or not it manifests as explic-

itly sexual or not. That desire is mutually experienced and meaningful 

(Fairbairn, 1954; Mitchell, 2000; Davies, 1994) is certain. That shared 

speech—intersubjective understanding—can decipher its meaning is, 

however, less clear. What analysts can do, which perhaps the parent can-

not and certainly Dr. O did not, and which patients like children need to 

hear, is to acknowledge and articulate this unspeakability.

If Dr. O’s lapsus linguae showed rather than told, I gave as good as I 

got, or maybe better (this story is not without my own aggression). Some 

years later I put on a dumbshow. Dr. O’s Danish modern couch was 

oddly positioned: its foot abutted the wall and its head protruded into the 

room. His chair, four or five feet away, was angled at about 45 degrees to 

the head of the couch, thus affording him a full-length view of his reclin-

ing patient. When I sat down on the couch or rose from it, I faced him. 

But one day, at session’s end, I reversed my action. Instead of facing him 

as I stood up, I impulsively swung my legs over the couch’s far side. 

Feeling an obscure frustration devoid of any accompanying thought, I 

knew I was protesting, but had no idea what. Nor do I recall our discuss-

ing this pantomime at all (which doesn’t mean we didn’t).

His gratifying look of surprise, which greeted my good-bye, was noth-

ing compared to what happened another time, when, having risen on the 

usual side, I turned away from him and began lifting the couch along its 

length in order to flip it. As I was doing so, I glanced back to see his 

eyebrows practically somersaulting. But he only said, “Watch your purse, 

it’s going to fall.” Setting my bag on the floor, I turned the couch over. I 

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SEXUAL VIOLATION  IN AN ANALYTIC TREATMENT 

53

am pretty sure, though, that, before I left, I righted it and replaced the 

pillow that had landed on the ground.

At that early date, Dr. O could not have read Little’s (1990) later ac-

count of smashing Winnicott’s vase. Still, let us congratulate him for hav-

ing survived this disruption of his office, and for having stayed his anger 

at my attempted parricide (Loewald, 1979. Let us sympathize with him 

too. In the face of a patient’s act, who is light on their feet? By definition, 

Lacan (1973) insists, the Real leaves most of us speechless most of the 

time. It is only after the fact, upon reflection—usually with someone 

else—that we can begin to name, with varying degrees of success, that 

which refuses symbolization. Myself, not having had the chance to talk 

this over with my analyst, I am going to talk it over with you, with the 

community that, as I will relate, I chose in Dr. O’s stead.

Looking back, I want, first, to read my very modest temper tantrum 

literally: What was I trying to upend, halfway through my treatment, by 

turning the couch upside down? Something about the consulting room? 

Or his consulting room? Psychoanalysis? The couch itself? Was there an 

old order I was trying to overthrow in those days when cultural revolu-

tion and political protest were either in the air or recent memories? Maybe 

by making the medium my message, I was pointing out (a gesture in it-

self) that he was doing something too. Perhaps I hoped my mime would 

make silence speak. It is hard not to infer that his dumbness, his not-

speaking, was my target.

But, in writing, I am also drawn to the symptom’s specificity. If incest 

was in the air, Oedipus was not far away either. It is worth noting that I 

did not remove from the wall the line drawing of the prone naked woman 

hanging above the foot of the couch. Half-aware of the unsettling fanta-

sies and wishes it excited as I gazed at it three days a week, I might have 

wanted at least to protest that this décor sexualized the room or, rather, 

that Dr. O had eroticized his office with it. Instead, I wrote a poem about 

it, but never told him. Did I fear he would retaliate, invalidating my com-

plaint by deeming it a projection of my desire? Or having penned the 

verse only 14 months after Dr. O’s lapse, was I reluctant to disturb sleep-

ing dogs?

Here, I suppose, was an iatrogenic repetition compulsion. Or shall we 

call it collusion? Enactment? If I wanted to turn my back on the treat-

ment’s rot, maybe I also wanted to keep it hot. Doubtless, I wanted Dr. 

O to want to look at me all day too. But, I see now, I would have felt so 

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