Her experience isn’t unusual. Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychotherapy, first identified the phenomenon of erotic transference in 1915 and many others have explored the idea since. David Mann, a psychotherapist who has written books on the topic, explains erotic transference can show up in a variety of ways, from feelings of intense attraction to something more subtle or even anxiety-provoking. “Clients can feel tremendous inhibition around sexual excitement because of things that have happened in their life, so it isn’t always something that’s about pleasure,” he explains. “Sometimes it evokes frustration, for example. They know I [the therapist] am out of reach. That I’m not going to break the boundary.”