Qeering the Therapeutic Dyad by Ann D'Ercole, Editor 3. The case presentation focuses on the vicissitudes of a gay therapist treating a gay patient.
Treatment is described through a series of ongoing dreams illustrating transference issues.
An enactment between the therapist and the patient focuses on countertransference issues as well. Each represents a different subset of assumptions in a psycho-social culture which is organized around spurious gender categories and where there is a conflation of gender and desire, identity and object choice. The relational approach requires consistent effort to explore and recognize the patient's subjectivity and to create a safe holding environment in which the therapist's subjectivity can be ignored or addressed in accordance with the patient's need. This is a discussion of a case in which the therapy operated largely by unconscious transference feelings, and its apparent beneficial results came about through the transmutative effect of a benevolent transference relationship rather than through any particular set of interpretations or reconstructions. The discussion of the case focuses on the patient's dreams during the treatment.