“Ethical Uses of Countertransference Love:
The Analyst's Embodied Presence”
Andrea Celenza, Ph.D.
Dr. Celenza will read several essays from her recent book Transference, Love, Being: Essential Essays from the Field (Routledge, 2022). The first essay sets the background context involving Dr. Celenza' s theorizing on the place of love and receptivity in analytic work. The second essay will discuss the use of embodied countertransference and will be read in short excerpts to maximize audience participation throughout. The final essay will present a field theory approach to clinical process. After each reading, there will be time allotted for discussion with the audience for a lively interactive experience throughout.
Learning Objectives
After the conclusion of this presentation, participants will be able to:
1. Discuss the place of love and receptivity in psychoanalytic practice.
2. Make use of their embodied countertransference in the immediacy of clinical practice.
3. Notice and use unconscious, emergent imagery as it arises in the clinical field.
About the Presenter
Andrea Celenza, Ph.D. is a Training and Supervising Analyst at the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute and Assistant Clinical Professor at Harvard Medical School. She is also Adjunct Faculty at The Florida Psychoanalytic Center. She has written numerous papers on love, sexuality and psychoanalysis and is on the Editorial Board of JAPA. She is the recipient of several awards, including the Karl Menninger Award and the Helena Deutsch Prize. She has two online courses and her writings have been translated into Italian, Spanish, Korean, Russian, Chinese and Farsi. Her third book, entitled, Transference, Love, and Being: Essential Essays from the Field, was published in 2022 by Routledge and was a finalist for the Gradiva Award. Her latest book is part of a series on seminal contributions, Erotic Transferences: A Contemporary Introduction (Routledge, July, 2025). Dr. Celenza is in private practice in Lexington, Massachusetts, USA.
About the Moderator
Drew Tillotson, PsyD, FIPA, BCPsa is a board-certified psychoanalyst in San Francisco, California. He is a graduate, Training and Supervising Analyst, faculty member, and Past President of the Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California (PINC) and also serves as a Training and Supervising Analyst on the faculty of the Northwestern Psychoanalytic Society and Institute (NPSI). He is Past Vice-President of the North American Psychoanalytic Confederation and currently a board director for both the Confederation of Independent Psychoanalytic Societies and the North American Psychoanalytic Confederation. He teaches at PINC and NPSI and maintains a full-time private practice in San Francisco. Recent publications include co-editor and chapter author of the Gradiva Award–winning Body as Psychoanalytic Object: Clinical Applications from Winnicott to Bion and Beyond (2021); chapter author in Braving the Erotic Field in the Treatment of Adolescents and Children (2022); and contributions to Jonathan Sklar’s The Soft Power of Culture: Art, Transitional Space, Death and Play (2024).
