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A relational psychoanalysis perspective on the necessity of acknowledging failure in order to restore the facilitating and containing features of the intersubjective relationship (the shared third)
... Transference can be understood as everything the client brings to the therapy relationship, including interpersonal expectations and fears, and these evoke certain countertransference responses from the therapist (Gabbard, 2020;Høgland, 2014). The therapist's countertransference can contribute to enactments and impasses, but can also provide information that the therapist can use in the therapy process (Aron, 2006;Benjamin, 2009). ...
... Accordingly, Karlsson (2004, p. 567) defined collusion as "a resistance between therapist and patient in which the transference and countertransference become interlocked in a tacit agreement to avoid a mutually fantasized catastrophe." Losing oneself as a therapist could also involve getting stuck in complementary roles, when one's position was defined by the other's, when there was a disagreement about who was doing what to whom, and both parties could experience themselves as being negatively treated by the other -described by Benjamin (2009) as the structure for all relational breakdowns. Finding oneself as a therapist required finding a third position, where it was possible to think and feel together and not just respond to each other. ...
... Finding oneself as a therapist required finding a third position, where it was possible to think and feel together and not just respond to each other. According to Benjamin (2009) this "shared third" -where it is possible to identify with the client without losing one's own subjective perspective -is crucial for resolving deadlocks. When the therapist and the client can leave their power struggle and begin to meta-communicate, they can return to reciprocity and acknowledgment of each other (Aron, 2006). ...
Problematic interactional patterns between client and therapist involve several phenomena, such as different forms of ruptures, enactments, impasses, and stalemates. This study explores psychodynamic therapists’ experiences and understanding of deadlock in the psychotherapy process. Interviews with eight experienced therapists were analyzed applying the Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). Generally, the therapists described the deadlock as a negative process, blocking the progress of therapy. The deadlock confronted them with unfulfilled expectations of closeness and connection, as well as unwelcome feelings and wishes, and evoked self-doubt and questioning of their own professional role. The therapists experienced a loss of agency and reflective capacity in the encounter with the client. We found an elusive quality of something absent and incomprehensible in the therapists’ experiences. Resolution of deadlock interacted with therapists finding a constructive role in the therapeutic relationship and being able to give meaning to their experiences. We conclude that the therapists need to be observant of their experiences of deadlock and talk to others about them. The knowledge of deadlocks as natural phenomena in the therapy process that can be recognized, addressed, and worked with must be more widely diffused and should be an integral part of psychotherapy education and training.
... Transference can be understood as everything the client brings to the therapy relationship, including interpersonal expectations and fears, and these evoke certain countertransference responses from the therapist (Gabbard, 2020;Høgland, 2014). The therapist's countertransference can contribute to enactments and impasses, but can also provide information that the therapist can use in the therapy process (Aron, 2006;Benjamin, 2009). ...
... Accordingly, Karlsson (2004, p. 567) defined collusion as "a resistance between therapist and patient in which the transference and countertransference become interlocked in a tacit agreement to avoid a mutually fantasized catastrophe." Losing oneself as a therapist could also involve getting stuck in complementary roles, when one's position was defined by the other's, when there was a disagreement about who was doing what to whom, and both parties could experience themselves as being negatively treated by the other -described by Benjamin (2009) as the structure for all relational breakdowns. Finding oneself as a therapist required finding a third position, where it was possible to think and feel together and not just respond to each other. ...
... Finding oneself as a therapist required finding a third position, where it was possible to think and feel together and not just respond to each other. According to Benjamin (2009) this "shared third" -where it is possible to identify with the client without losing one's own subjective perspective -is crucial for resolving deadlocks. When the therapist and the client can leave their power struggle and begin to meta-communicate, they can return to reciprocity and acknowledgment of each other (Aron, 2006). ...
Problematic interactional patterns between client and therapist involve several phenomena, such as different forms of ruptures, enactments, impasses, and stalemates. This study explores psychodynamic therapists’ experiences and understanding of deadlock in the psychotherapy process. Interviews with eight experienced therapists were analyzed applying the Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). Generally, the therapists described the deadlock as a negative process, blocking the progress of therapy. The deadlock confronted them with unfulfilled expectations of closeness and connection, as well as unwelcome feelings and wishes, and evoked self-doubt and questioning of their own professional role. The therapists experienced a loss of agency and reflective capacity in the encounter with the client. We found an elusive quality of something absent and incomprehensible in the therapists’ experiences. Resolution of deadlock interacted with therapists finding a constructive role in the therapeutic relationship and being able to give meaning to their experiences. We conclude that the therapists need to be observant of their experiences of deadlock and talk to others about them. The knowledge of deadlocks as natural phenomena in the therapy process that can be recognized, addressed, and worked with must be more widely diffused and should be an integral part of psychotherapy education and training.
... Transference can be understood as everything the client brings to the therapy relationship, including interpersonal expectations and fears, and these evoke certain countertransference responses from the therapist (Gabbard, 2020;Høgland, 2014). The therapist's countertransference can contribute to enactments and impasses, but can also provide information that the therapist can use in the therapy process (Aron, 2006;Benjamin, 2009). ...
... Accordingly, Karlsson (2004, p. 567) defined collusion as "a resistance between therapist and patient in which the transference and countertransference become interlocked in a tacit agreement to avoid a mutually fantasized catastrophe." Losing oneself as a therapist could also involve getting stuck in complementary roles, when one's position was defined by the other's, when there was a disagreement about who was doing what to whom, and both parties could experience themselves as being negatively treated by the other -described by Benjamin (2009) as the structure for all relational breakdowns. Finding oneself as a therapist required finding a third position, where it was possible to think and feel together and not just respond to each other. ...
... Finding oneself as a therapist required finding a third position, where it was possible to think and feel together and not just respond to each other. According to Benjamin (2009) this "shared third" -where it is possible to identify with the client without losing one's own subjective perspective -is crucial for resolving deadlocks. When the therapist and the client can leave their power struggle and begin to meta-communicate, they can return to reciprocity and acknowledgment of each other (Aron, 2006). ...
Problematic interactional patterns between client and therapist involve several phenomena, such as different forms of ruptures, enactments, impasses, and stalemates. This study explores psychodynamic therapists’ experiences and understanding of deadlock in the psychotherapy process. Interviews with eight experienced therapists were analyzed applying the Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). Generally, the therapists described the deadlock as a negative process, blocking the progress of therapy. The deadlock confronted them with unfulfilled expectations of closeness and connection, as well as unwelcome feelings and wishes, and evoked self-doubt and questioning of their own professional role. The therapists experienced a loss of agency and reflective capacity in the encounter with the client. We found an elusive quality of something absent and incomprehensible in the therapists’ experiences. Resolution of deadlock interacted with therapists finding a constructive role in the therapeutic relationship and being able to give meaning to their experiences. We conclude that the therapists need to be observant of their experiences of deadlock and talk to others about them. The knowledge of deadlocks as natural phenomena in the therapy process that can be recognized, addressed, and worked with must be more
... Relational psychoanalysts argued that not only was enactment inevitable, but it could also provide an analytic opportunity (Renik, 1993a(Renik, , 1993b(Renik, , 2006Hirsch, 1998;Stern, 2004;Levenson, 2006;Benjamin, 2009). Renik (1993a) argued that enactments could have therapeutic consequences, and offered the following radical position: ...
... (p. 216) Benjamin (2009), another relational psychoanalyst, operated with an intersubjective understanding of enactment, but also returned to some of the ideas articulated by the self psychologists, sharing the notion that enactment could be a mode of understanding between patient and analyst. Benjamin contended that the conventional thinking on enactment within the psychoanalytic community needed to be transformed. ...
... This emphasis on the act of repair evokes Benjamin's (2009) work, and her argument that the therapeutic relationship survives experiences of rupture not because the therapist is a perfect container, but because they are able to make a repair. ...
The aim of this study was to explore the experiences of psychodynamically and psychoanalytically oriented clinicians regarding enactment. Although enactment constitutes one of the most important emotional events in treatment, how clinicians experience, understand, manage, and use enactments clinically is not well understood. In order to study this topic, the author first conducted a thorough review of the literature regarding conceptions of transference and countertransference, action in psychoanalysis, and enactment. She then conducted semi-structured interviews with 14 clinicians who had experienced enactment, transcribed the video recordings of the interviews, and identified common themes using an interpretative phenomenological analysis. Three domains emerged in participants’ recollections of instances of enactment: the clinicians’ experience of enactment, the process of enactment, and the integration of enactment. This study confirms the importance of exploring the conception of enactment given its emotional intensity for practitioners, its clinical effects, and its potential for therapeutic growth.
... Transference can be understood as everything the client brings to the therapy relationship, including interpersonal expectations and fears, and these evoke certain countertransference responses from the therapist (Gabbard, 2020;Høgland, 2014). The therapist's countertransference can contribute to enactments and impasses, but can also provide information that the therapist can use in the therapy process (Aron, 2006;Benjamin, 2009). ...
... Accordingly, Karlsson (2004, p. 567) defined collusion as "a resistance between therapist and patient in which the transference and countertransference become interlocked in a tacit agreement to avoid a mutually fantasized catastrophe." Losing oneself as a therapist could also involve getting stuck in complementary roles, when one's position was defined by the other's, when there was a disagreement about who was doing what to whom, and both parties could experience themselves as being negatively treated by the other -described by Benjamin (2009) as the structure for all relational breakdowns. Finding oneself as a therapist required finding a third position, where it was possible to think and feel together and not just respond to each other. ...
... Finding oneself as a therapist required finding a third position, where it was possible to think and feel together and not just respond to each other. According to Benjamin (2009) this "shared third" -where it is possible to identify with the client without losing one's own subjective perspective -is crucial for resolving deadlocks. When the therapist and the client can leave their power struggle and begin to meta-communicate, they can return to reciprocity and acknowledgment of each other (Aron, 2006). ...
Problematic interactional patterns between client and therapist involve several phenomena, such as different forms of ruptures, enactments, impasses, and stalemates. This study explores psychodynamic therapists’ experiences and understanding of deadlock in the psychotherapy process. Interviews with eight experienced therapists were analyzed applying the Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). Generally, the therapists described the deadlock as a negative process, blocking the progress of therapy. The deadlock confronted them with unfulfilled expectations of closeness and connection, as well as unwelcome feelings and wishes, and evoked self-doubt and questioning of their own professional role. The therapists experienced a loss of agency and reflective capacity in the encounter with the client. We found an elusive quality of something absent and incomprehensible in the therapists’ experiences. Resolution of deadlock interacted with therapists finding a constructive role in the therapeutic relationship and being able to give meaning to their experiences. We conclude that the therapists need to be observant of their experiences of deadlock and talk to others about them. The knowledge of deadlocks as natural phenomena in the therapy process that can be recognized, addressed, and worked with must be more widely diffused and should be an integral part of psychotherapy education and training.
... Relate-Y also draws upon a diverse range of relational and developmental approaches to psychotherapy, including attachment theory (Bowlby, 1969), developmental (Freud, 1946;Winnicott, 1958) and relational psychoanalysis (Benjamin, 2017;Mitchell, 1988), and Self- • Promoting curiosity and openness in therapy. ...
... Relational psychoanalysis focuses on the co-construction of meaning between therapist and client, highlighting the collaborative nature of the therapeutic process. This approach emphasizes mutual engagement, where both therapists and young people actively contribute to understanding and resolving challenges (Benjamin, 2017;Mitchell, 1988;Ogden, 2019). Self-psychology emphasizes the role of empathic attunement -the therapist's ability to sensitively align with a young person's emotional world -in shaping their sense of self. ...
... This is the essential grief work done during this period. (Kalsched, 1996, p. 164) Principle Eight: Analysts' vulnerability and the working through of enactments Whilst the intrapsychic lenses described above assist me in understanding how the inner world manifests inter-psychically, Jessica Benjamin (2004Benjamin ( , 2009 assists with the interpersonal dimensions, as inner states are interpersonalised. When inevitably, particularly via the powerful forces of projective identification, I contribute to, and patients find in me, the traumatic relational dynamics of their early history, this is fertile ground for impulses towards manic repair and the lesser coniunctio, the mea culpa of the therapeutic apology, but also the potential for something deeper. ...
... There exists the opportunity for genuine grief in the giving up of omnipotence, the possibility of the creation of something new between us; where there was disavowal and attack, there might now be acknowledgement, recognition, grief and shared intimacy. As Benjamin (2009) suggested, reminiscent of Jung (1946, the co-construction of the symbolic third within the intersubjective matrix enables the possibility that: I can hear both your voice and mine, as can you, without one cancelling the other out: I can hear more than one part of yourself, you can hear more than one part of yourself-especially not only the part that is negating me, but also the complementary part that I have been carrying as you negate it. (Benjamin, 2009, p. 442) ...
Many patients report experiencing some form of intrapsychic attack, often manifesting in psychological and physical self-attack, and destructive interpersonal dynamics. Writers such as Melanie Klein (1940), Sigmund Freud (1917/1950), and Henri Rey (1994) offer hypotheses regarding the origins of such intrapsychic self-attack, and it is from these that the first ideas regarding the concept of the impulse to repair arise. However, an exploration of the relationship between Jungian perspectives, particularly in relation to the concept of the coniunctio, and psychoanalytic ideas regarding reparation of the inner world, is notably lacking. This paper explores both psychoanalytic and Jungian analytic theoretical perspectives, and the relationship between these, in articulating the ingredients which might contribute to true repair of the inner world within the patient, the analyst, and the therapeutic relationship. Clinical case material generated will be utilised to illustrate the clinical and theoretical material explored, and will illustrate my articulation of the elements which might contribute to true repair of the inner world within both the patient and the analyst, and within the therapeutic relationship.
... Benjamin (2004) assists me with the interpersonal dimensions of this deeper challenge. Whilst Klein (1935) and Rey (1994) emphasised the intrapsychic aspects of transformation of the inner world, Benjamin's (2004Benjamin's ( , 2009) interpersonal emphasis provides a helpful map for interpersonal engagement with the patient. She noted: ...
... In the opportunity for genuine grief, in the giving up of omnipotence and omniscience, there is the possibility of the creation of something new between us: where there was disavowal and attack, there might now be acknowledgement, recognition, grief and shared intimacy. As Benjamin (2009) suggested, the co-construction of the symbolic third within the intersubjective matrix enables the possibility that, I can hear both your voice and mine, as can you, without one cancelling the other out: I can hear more than one part of yourself, you can hear more than one part of yourself-especially not only the part that is negating me, but also the complementary part that I have been carrying as you negate it. (p. ...
In this paper the author proposes that a central task of psychotherapeutic work is to “stay close to the terror,” particularly when working with those patients whose inner world is populated by often dissociated states of traumatic horror. The paper explores a range of psychoanalytic, Jungian, and trauma theory that might assist in guiding psychotherapists regarding how we might engage with this central task, particularly given the often terrifying intrapsychic, interpsychic, and interpersonal disturbances such therapeutic work entails, for both patient and therapist.
... Since the theoretical relational turn in psychoanalytic theory and psychotherapy (Aron, 1996;Atlas & Aron, 2018;Mitchell, 2000) there has been an emphasis on the value of not only the awareness of the analyst's reactions, or counter-transference, towards the patient (Benjamin, 2009;Cooper, 2012) but also on how such reactions can be used to inform the therapist about the patient and their dynamics and process. With this relational turn, there is now a view of two subjectivities relating to each other in the therapeutic process. ...
... They show the diverse and diversity of the impact of the pandemic. To this end, as mentioned earlier by Benjamin (2009) "I can hear both your voice and mine as can you without one cancelling the other out; I can hear more than one part of yourself, you can hear more than one part of yourself … It is now possible to recognize the presence of multiple voices and parts of self" (p. 442). ...
The hallmark of being human is to tell stories. The stories told give meaning to the experience, and it is in telling stories about our experience, that we begin the process of meaning-making. Psychotherapy is storytelling, and in our consultation room we, as psychotherapists, listen to the tales told. This paper documents my story in response to some of the stories of my patients’ experience of the impact of the unprecedented impact of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. While there have been pandemics before, this pandemic is arguable unique because of social media and the number of people across the world who can share their experience. It is said that more than 4 billion people have self-isolated at home together at the same time as a collective humanity in response to their country’s lockdown rules. For psychotherapists, the shift to online therapy has allowed for a continuation of psychotherapy, and the telling of stories of COVID-19. Some of their stories are sad stories of loss and uncertainty. Some of their stories are more positive and inspiring. In this paper, three patients’ stories have been selected that illustrate both the positive and negative reactions to the COVID-19 pandemic. As the conceptual framework is relational psychoanalytic with its focus on the dynamics of the intersubjective relationship, my story, as counter-transference reactions are incorporated.
... I wanted to know why some adult children of narcissists become traumatizers themselves, while others live in the painful grip of relational post-traumatic stress. I was most helped in my thinking about this by the work of Jessica Benjamin (1988Benjamin ( , 1995Benjamin ( , 1998Benjamin ( , 1999Benjamin ( , 2004Benjamin ( , 2009aBenjamin ( , 2009b, whose theory of intersubjectivity, understood as the process of developing the capacity for mutual recognition, immediately spoke to me. Benjamin's use of the term "complementarity" to stand for the breakdown of intersubjective relatedness into domination/submission strategies for control was exactly the link I was looking for in thinking about traumatic narcissism. ...
... A la hora de redactar esta comunicación, he tenido muy presente la idea de aprovechar la presencia entre nosotros de Jessica Benjamin para dialogar con ella sobre la cuestión de los límites y la revelación de nuestros fallos . Leí con mucho interés el debate que ella co-protagonizó ya hace tres años en otro foro, el de las "Controversias psicoanalíticas" organizadas por la IPA, sobre la idea de que los analistas deberían reconocer a sus pacientes que les han fallado cuando se producen fallos inevitables en cualquier relación terapéutica (Benjamin, 2009). La aportación de Benjamin en ese debate me evocó la contraposición que hace Winnicott de la madre suficientemente buena versus la madre ideal. ...
... By the mid-1990s, the place of developmental tilt thinking had become the subject of active debate among relational writers. 5 Ideas about nonlinear movement and shifting self states reminded us that the developmental element emerges across the lifespan (Aron, 2001;Benjamin, 2009Benjamin, , 2010Cooper, 2014;Davies, 2004;Grand, 2000Grand, , 2010Harris, 2005Harris, , 2009Mitchell, 2000;Pizer, 1998;Seligman, 2003;Stein, 1999;D. B. Stern, 2009;Warshaw, 1992). ...
... This interaction had the ping-pong quality of "doer-done-to" complementarity (Benjamin 2012). The doer-done-to dynamic differs from domination and submission in that it is constantly reversing: the person who is shamed in one moment, shames the other in the next (Benjamin 2009). Josh and I struggled with repudiated, degraded femininity, which was repetitively passed back and forth between us. ...
This paper explores the therapeutic process between analyst and Josh, a trans man whose life had fallen apart after transition. Repetitive enactments involving hiding, deceiving and mystification constituted a prolonged therapeutic impasse. The analyst’s struggle with these binds and with countertransference confusion and anxiety, ultimately illuminated zones that had remained off-limits for a prolonged period of time. Where the couple had been snared in a bind structured by gender, they were now able to access a history of violation and to ask more profound questions about connection, aloneness, authenticity and loss.
... Enactments of mutual contempt may unconsciously recreate childhood experiences for therapists as well as patients with parents that were "traumatizing narcissists" (Shaw, 2013). Benjamin (2009) noted the intersubjective dynamics that unfold as treatment re-opens old wounds for both parties: ...
Enactments of contempt and counter-contempt often occur when patient and analyst become embroiled in power struggles about the nature of reality. The patient feels shamed for being deemed “out of touch with reality” while the therapist feels shamed in retaliation for being a moralistic critic making arrogant assertions about the true nature of reality. Working through enactments of contempt and counter-contempt requires that the analyst acknowledge contempt in the countertransference and how it shames the patient. It also requires working toward greater acceptance of patient behavior that seems highly offensive as the analyst may feel shamed by the patient’s contempt for the analyst’s viewpoint, approach to treatment, and personality.
... From this point of view, each rupture or disagreement on the shared task, goal or bond is not considered as a drawback anymore, rather as a starting point that might promote a new awareness of the client (Lingiardi, 2002). In addition, Benjamin (2009) considered ruptures as a breakdown of the process of mutual recognition and an opportunity to restore the intersubjective space. In such a dynamic, the active role of the therapist would not be sufficient to achieve the resolution process (Safran & Muran, 2003). ...
The present single case study explored whether a positive collaboration may conceal some of the patient’s dysfunctional interpersonal schemas, hence reflecting a non-authentic collaboration. In particular, we reasoned that conceiving collaborations only as adaptive relations may prevent a comprehensive insight of the therapeutic relationship itself. To explore this possibility, we used an intersubjective approach that emphasizes the integration of specific and non-specific factors in an interdependent way. In particular, we assessed different constructs (i.e. therapeutic alliance, technical interventions, defense mechanism, therapeutic relationship) of the therapeutic process and combined them through statistical methods able to investigate the micro- and macro-analytic processes that define each interaction. Results of a single case study (Sara) showed that the collaborative functioning may hold back many critical aspects, that hardly conciliate with the classic positive definition of collaboration. These findings, therefore, indicate that Sara’s collaborative alliance works mainly as a pseudo-alliance.
The MAPS (Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies) sponsored MDMA-assisted therapy protocol has had greater success in treating trauma in preliminary clinical trials than any prior psychotherapeutic, pharmacologic, or combined approach. It is predicated on a synergy between drug action and the participant’s inner healing intelligence. The latter is described mainly by analogy with the body’s capacity to heal itself, and the treatment is characterized as a means of activating or accessing this capacity. How is this rather mysterious-sounding process so effective? I suggest that the therapist’s full commitment to, and trust in this treatment framework, along with the medication’s subjective enhancement of trust, encourages individuals who have suffered trauma and have difficulty trusting others to engage the therapist as a kind of witness. I discuss parallels between the therapeutic attitude implied in the inner healing intelligence model and the way a therapist can act as witness in the resolution of dissociative enactment in relational psychoanalysis. Trusting the healing capacity of one’s inner healing intelligence is dynamically equivalent to trusting the relational process. This makes trusting one’s inner healing intelligence a process of feeling witnessed. In both settings, the therapist’s willingness to acknowledge her technical limitations or failings, coupled with a conviction that the participant/patient’s primary need in processing trauma is to feel witnessed, facilitates the integration of dissociated experience.
Solidarity is an elusive concept used and abused for varieties of meaning-making purposes. Compelling cases have competed to characterize it. By definition, solidarity refers to a complexity in terms of theoretical categorization and empirical conceptualization. Therefore, the “fate of solidarity” has somehow remained indeterminate over the course of world history. By revisiting non-Cartesian pragmatics and quantum-logical approaches, this chapter explores transversal implications of solidarity mobilizations. Seen from pragmatist quantal lenses, morphogenetic traits of “solidarity complexions” are mobilized by co-extensive socio-physical/psycho-social constellations. Transnational solidarities move through concurrent dynamics beyond social space–time. “Moving memories” and “traveling imageries” encompass past, present, and future solidarity experiences. Solidarity waves flow thru some quantic patterns like entanglement, indeterminacy, and non-locality. Running fluidly at deeper dimensions, sentimental solidarity streams are founded by and establish psycho-social habitats. Working plastically at surface layers, phenomenal solidarity tides appear athwart socio-physical fields and practices. Plainly put, there is not any clear-cut boundary that separates betwixt the inner lives of “virtual” altruisms and the outer worlds of “real” sacrifices. Hence, “solidarity complexes” (interior virtualities) and “complex solidarities” (exterior realities) should be investigated in combinatorial manners. By way of conclusion, four sentiments (joy-love-lust-pain) are found significant for reconfiguring four (mechanic-organic-parochial-pluriversal) solidarity pathways.
An intention of this chapter is to show how theory can be used to serve—but not dominate—a collaborative relational process in pursuit of beneficial change. Two myths about change and the use of theory are highlighted and challenged. The distinction between Jessica Benjamin’s ‘surrendering to the Third’ and ‘submission’ is illustrated with a verbatim extract from a clinical session. The need for collaboration to be both a cognitive and emotional endeavour is further emphasised. Fourteen aspects of collaborative therapy are briefly discussed, ranging from principles to practice.
This article explores the integration of Jessica Benjamin’s concepts of ‘mutual recognition’ and ‘the third’ into child-parent psychotherapy (CPP), a relationship-based trauma-informed dyadic intervention model rooted in attachment theory. Despite the significance of caregiver-child relationships in trauma response, Benjamin’s work remains underutilized in the CPP literature. This article uses a case illustration to demonstrate how incorporating Benjamin’s concepts enriches CPP interventions that address the relational impact of trauma on young children. Three strategies are outlined to cultivate thirdness within CPP, drawing from clinical material: exploring trauma and complementarity, distinguishing play from reality, and working with the clinician’s subjectivity. The article illustrates how the utilization of Benjamin’s concepts can complement CPP and how emphasizing the intersubjective dynamic between parent and child, enhancing parental subjectivity, and prioritizing the repair of recognition breakdowns can support clinicians in advancing the therapeutic goals of CPP.
Supervisees who have experienced disturbing therapeutic incidents that undermined their professional self‐experiences need a supervisory environment of sameness and solidarity to process and learn from these lived experiences. To create such an environment, supervisors need to minimize the sense of safety asymmetry between themselves and their supervisees by awakening to the ‘dark,’ ominous truths of professional life. This process is facilitated by summoning memories of therapeutic experiences of failure, vulnerability and frustration at having insufficient time to achieve wished‐for therapeutic goals. Awakening to these truths inspires a dark experiential mode that helps the supervisor share the supervisee's destiny and existential anxiety. Despite the contradiction between the dark and the playful, experiential modes, both are essential for creatively understanding the supervisee's disturbing therapeutic experiences and learning from them. Moreover, when these modes are interwoven, they enrich and strengthen the supervisory process by diversifying the supervisory dyad's ways of perceiving the unfolding therapeutic interaction and of coping with supervisory challenges.
Previous studies showed that there is a relationship between the sense of unity of individuals and their relationship satisfaction. Also, it is implied that there is a link between the sense of unity and attachment security of couples. There were three aims of the present study. First aim was to examine what predicts relationship satisfaction. Another purpose of the present study was to study what predicts attachment security. It is hypothesized that “we” words (namely, the sense of unity) in relationship-defining memories and the levels of positive and negative emotions memories with these memories can predict not only relationship satisfaction but also attachment security of couples. Final goal of the present study was to conduct a content analysis for themes in relationship-defining memories. Participants wrote down the memories that most reflected and defined their relationship. Then, they rated their emotions they felt about these memories. Finally, they completed Couple Satisfaction Index (CSI) and Brief Accessibility, Responsiveness, and Engagement Scale (BARE) to measure their relationship satisfaction and attachment security, respectively. After conducting separate multiple regression analyses for examining what predicts relationship satisfaction and attachment security, it was revealed that the sense of unity, positive emotions, and negative emotions associated with relationship-defining memories predicted attachment security. Nevertheless, only the sense of unity and positive emotions experienced in relationship-defining memories predicted relationship satisfaction. On the other hand, fourteen themes emerged in participants’ relationship-defining memories after four different coders analyzed dominant themes in memories. Results are discussed within the existing literature. Finally, clinical implications of results regarding the sense of unity, positive emotions, negative emotions, relationship satisfaction and attachment security were discussed.
A central role of supervision is to help the supervisee develop the self-as-therapist by internalizing analytic theoretical convictions and clinical practices and creating an individualistic professional identity. Supervisors can help this process by viewing some of the supervisees' narrated therapeutic impasses as manifestations of creative rebellion. This creative rebellion helps them exercise their freedom of choice and become who they are as therapists. The creative rebellion metaphor can sometimes explain disruptions to the therapeutic process without threatening the cohesion of the supervisee's professional self and the integrity of the supervisory process.
Chronic emotional abandonment is traumatic for children, and often leads them to identify with the aggressor (IWA)-in order to hold onto their needed attachment to their parents, they feel, think, and do what their parents require, blame themselves for being abused and for their family's unhappiness, and feel ashamed. IWA often persists as a general tendency. Treatment requires therapists' dependability, attunement, empathy, interest, humility, and perhaps playfulness. Patients' history of abandonment should be explored in detail, though patients may be protective of their parents. Therapists should explore their own behavior if necessary, and acknowledge lapses; normalize and explore patients' shame; and avoid trying to "rescue" patients. Patients must be helped to re-find authority and agency over their own lives, and mourn their early loss of feeling "the right to a life." The treatment of "Claire," a 40-something child of two depressed parents, illustrates some of these points.
This paper describes and explores a racial conflict that occurred in a mixed race, sexual abuse survivors’ group. Curiosity and productive dialogue surrounding race faces inherent difficulties and evokes powerful feelings that are often defended against through unconscious dissociative processes. This does not only lead to the denial of the traumatic impact of racism and racist acts, the denial in and of itself is traumatizing. I emphasize both the challenges and benefits that occurred in the processing of a group enactment around a racial conflict. The analysis of the group process is supported by psychoanalytic ideas surrounding the impact of racism and prejudice, contemporary relational theories of dissociation, the significance of witnessing and repair, and intersectional theory as it relates to race and gender. A discussion of the parallel processes between the group process and systemic racism in our society is interwoven as an important theme in the paper. This discussion demonstrates how the psychoanalytic process, whether group or individual, can be applied to our understanding of unconscious dynamics underlying the current divisiveness in our socio-political environment.
Cet article explore le processus thérapeutique entre l’analyste et Josh, un homme trans dont la vie s’est effondrée après la transition. Les enactments 2 répétitifs impliquant de se cacher, de tromper et de mystifier ont constitué une impasse thérapeutique prolongée. La lutte de l’analyste avec ces contraintes et avec la confusion et l’angoisse contre-transférentielles a finalement permis d’éclairer des territoires psychiques restés longtemps hors d’atteinte. Le couple thérapeutique, pris initialement au piège d’un lien structuré par le genre, a pu finalement accéder à une histoire de violations et aborder des questions plus essentielles sur l’attachement, la solitude, l’authenticité et la perte.
Through intersubjective theory it is possible define perversions as behaviors characterized by the negation of the subjectivity of the Other. In the paper it is observed that perversions are a mode of affective regulation ; especially the perverse individual tries to deny the reality of the Other to avoid the anxiety associated to an intersubjective relationship. According to Jessica Benjamin's intersubjective theory, perversions are a behavioral mode of avoiding intimate development with the Other. In the relations that the perverse establishes there is no mutual recognition of subjectivity. Sexuality is therefore observed from a relational and intersubjective point of view. In the final part, some reflections are proposed on the therapeutic relationship of perverse individuals.
The author presents a reticular model of embodied subjectivity as an expansion of earlier hydraulic, plastic, and resonant models. Three vignettes taken from early life experience serve to illustrate how a reticular model recontextualizes the processes represented in earlier models in a way that demonstrates how unconscious emotional experience emerges from a continuously fluid register of multimodal embodied experience in interaction with a particular socially ordering context offering categories and hierarchies that can valorize or abject. Applying this model to the experiences described in the vignettes raises questions and possibilities for how intersectional categories and hierarchies of power emerge from and are shaped by the interaction of body and social context.
In this paper, I describe my ongoing journey with Daniel, a patient with a severe dissociative disorder. With detailed explorations of major enactments, I illustrate how issues around desire, excitement, and intimacy shape our eroticized transference-countertransference imbrication and compel episodic relational states of deadness and terror. Reflecting on the shifting roles of dominance, submission and states of dissociation, I explicate the powerful effects of spontaneity and self-disclosure in the navigation of seemingly intractable stalemates.
Often considered a more personal phenomenon, social theory has reconstituted emotions as socially constructed, opening up new lines of conceptual inquiry. Recent social theory for example has witnessed the growing influence of Axel Honneth and his theory of recognition, one that posits emotions as belonging to the intersubjective relational realm. This chapter explores the place of emotion in social theory, examining the mediating and compounding effects of emotions regarding issues such as social class and gender. This chapter includes an overview of the influence of psychoanalysis on the work of the Frankfurt School and the theories of Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari and Jessica Benjamin, as well as a spotlight on three specific emotions examined in social theory: respect, shame and trust.
This article describes the evolution of a critical dimension of self psychology that has evolved since Heinz Kohut’s death, one characterized by the transition from a one-person to a two-person psychology. This transition involved, initially, the change in the analyst’s role as limited to interpreting the patient’s intrapsychically generated selfobject experiences of development, rupture, and repair, to an emergence into full personhood; second, a new emphasis on the analyst’s subjectivity participating in a bi-directional relationship of mutuality rather than a unidirectional provision of needed functions; and finally, an overall approach to the therapeutic process as a complex, dynamic system. This emergent paradigm within self psychology we term relational self psychology. We illustrate its evolution through a historical review of critical papers that extended and transformed Kohut’s original vision, which already contained the seeds of a genuinely intersubjective and relational model. We outline these changes in four sections: (I) “Empathy and Beyond,” detailing the concept’s evolution within Kohut’s writing and its subsequent elaboration; (II) “From Provision to Mutuality,” describing the movement beyond Kohut’s focus on understanding and explaining and the mutative force of optimal frustration; (III) “You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby,” discussing infant research emphasizing face-to-face interaction and mutual regulation moving into the development of a truly bi-directional model of therapeutic action; and finally, (IV) “From Dyads to Systems,” integrating self psychology into a broader intersubjective, relational, dynamic system and theoretical context. Each section concludes with a bibliography of seminal-related articles that may offer a syllabus for further study.
Interweaving autobiographical narrative with clinical material, this essay examines the generative impact of an enactment initiated by an analyst who shares a history of early maternal loss with a group she led for motherless daughters. It invites readers to conceive of mourning from an intersubjective and multiple self-state perspective, where the boundaries of our inner object world meet the loss of an actual other, in a shared “third” space. Dissociative process will be examined as both a protector and inhibitor of mourning, both then and there and here and now, as it unfolds in the group process.
Intersectionality teaches us that inequality and discrimination are determined by a complex interplay between socially-constructed identities. The resulting states of otherness can introduce intersectional shame into the clinical encounter. When a fat analyst and fat patient share marginalized difference, their mutual shame can multiply across their relationship, producing an intersectional enactment. Exponentially high degrees of shame create a compounded need to disavow associated “not-me” self-states, resulting in a failure of reflective awareness with potentially significant consequences. Thus, it can take a radical, destabilizing intersectional enactment to penetrate this mutual dissociation. In such instances, the dramatic intensity of an intersectional enactment may represent the key to understanding it.
Die Technik der psychoanalytischen Traumdeutung galt lange als eines der Urgesteine der Disziplin; sie schien die Paradigmenwechsel sowohl in Freuds OEuvre wie in der späteren Psychoanalyse zu überdauern. Radikale Neuformulierungen wie die von Erikson, Morgenthaler und Meltzer wurden oft nicht oder nur oberflächlich angenommen. Obwohl sich die psychoanalytische Behandlungstechnik derzeit in Richtung eines beziehungsorientierten Ansatzes bewegt, scheint der Gestus des Deutens sich gerade im Bereich des Traums zu erhalten. Ausgehend von einer interpersonalen Entwicklungspsychologie des Traums untersucht der Beitrag das Geschehen in der psychoanalytischen Arbeit mit Träumen, mit einem Ausblick auf zeitgenössische Forschungsansätze zu non- und paraverbalen Aspekten des analytischen Dialogs.
This text is built around a clinical encounter illustrative of the challenge/struggle for recognizing and working in terms of race. The author employs perspectives and terms emerging from a vision developed by Frantz Fanon to represent issues of race for psychoanalytic practice that have begun to be recognized and discussed recently. These issues open up unprecedented challenges for theory and practice, particularly as they reveal the myopia of the terms and discourse with which we make meaning and practice clinically. The author examines the experience of his own need to perform in the role of rescuer, in tension with surrendering to the limits of an attempt at recognition within the discursive terms of a racist social order. In particular, the author points to the limitations of verbal re-presentational categories/models in currently accepted psychoanalytic discourse as well as in the capacities of both analyst and patient to re-present complex, emotionally difficult to bear, racialized experience. The author demonstrates the clinical value of expanding analytic attention to embodied registrations as one way of surrendering to this myopia of theory, and the effects of amnesia and/or erasure that racist discourse can have on re-presentations of traumatic histories for both patient and analyst.
Today’s toxic political climate has intruded into the therapeutic space. Both therapists and clients wonder about whether politics is an appropriate subject for therapy. Stronger treatment alliances were noted when clients perceived political similarity with their therapists. Inside the consulting room, polarizing political splits can occur and lead to impasses and alliance ruptures that can be difficult to bridge. Therapists, like their clients, can become overwhelmed, exhausted, and numb as they continue to listen, support, and contain political shock waves day after day. The ability to maintain empathy, think analytically and stay alert for enactments, can be difficult to sustain when politics enters the room. Various politically based countertransference reactions are addressed, and self-care and connection rather than retreat through detachment or dissociation is the desired goal.
This paper joins in the psychoanalytic discussion of depression from the perspective of Fairbairn’s object relations theory, something Fairbairn did not himself undertake. It aligns with Rubens’ view that an extension of Fairbairn’s theory beyond Fairbairn’s original theory to understand depression is not only advantageous but also necessary. Through a revisit of the significant divergences between the classical theory and the relational theory, it contextualises the potential of a Fairbairnian framework of depression as distinctive from the classical propositions. This paper complicates psychoanalytic knowledge of the nature of depression in response to the relational turn, concluding that, framed in Fairbairn’s system, depression should be understood as an actively organised psychic manoeuvre to defend against changes to the endopsychic structure, and most importantly, against the disintegration of a particular sense of self sponsored by internal object relationships.
Relational psychoanalysts have been seeing ghosts, belonging to both patients and analysts, which can haunt the analytic dyad, especially if left unprocessed by any of the parties. Drawing on two clinical examples, I explore a state of “speechlessness” that followed comments by patients that alluded to assumptions about my ethnic and religious background. I make a case that in these encounters mis-recognition by the patient led to a confusion of self-states, leading to “speechlessness” and fragmentation in me. I further explore how certain ghosts of my past were called into the room in these encounters and how they possibly haunted me.
I reflect on Larry Josephs and Jett Stone’s informative article (this issue), which provides a scholarly review of contempt and contempt management, theorizing links between contempt, shame, hierarchy, and power. The authors explore and illustrate how contempt/shame cycles can be enacted and worked with therapeutically. I value the project of deepening our understanding of an affective/interpersonal dynamic that often emerges in difficult clinical encounters in which contempt and shame are frequently tossed about like hot potatoes. While appreciating Josephs and Stone’s ideas, I reconsider the clinical material through my own relational lens (informed by object relational and developmental perspectives) and offer a second look, focusing on singular meanings and unique relational dynamics. I ask, in essence, “Whose contemptible object are we anyway?” Additionally, I discuss the authors’ contribution as it relates to a larger inquiry into the survival of destruction in psychoanalysis. I conclude by suggesting that this paper points to the importance of continually attending to power dynamics and the attendant risks of unconscious coercions in the mutual but asymmetric psychoanalytic encounter as relationally conceived.
Ferenczi's appreciation of the inherently mutual nature of the analytic encounter led him, and many who followed, to explore the value of mutual openness between patient and analyst. Specifically, Ferenczi saw the analyst's openness as an antidote to his earlier defensive denial of his failings and ambivalence toward the patient, which had undermined his patient's trust. My own view is that, while the analyst's openness with the patient can indeed help reestablish trust and restore a productive analytic process in the short term, it also poses long-term dangers. In certain treatments it may encourage "malignant regression", where the patient primarily seeks gratification from the analyst, resulting in an unmanageable "unending spiral of demands or needs" (Balint, 1968, p. 146). I suggest that an analyst's "confessions", in response to the patient's demand for accountability, can sometimes reinforce the patient's fantasy that healing comes from what the analyst gives or from turning the tables on his own sense of helplessness and shame by punishing or dominating the analyst. In such situations, the patient's fantasy may dovetail with the analyst's implicit theory that healing includes absorbing the patient's pain and even accepting his hostility, thus confirming the patient's fantasies, intensifying his malignant regression and dooming the treatment to failure. When malignant regression threatens, the analyst must set firmer boundaries, including limits on her openness, in order to help the patient shift his focus away from expectations of the analyst and toward greater self-reflection. This requires the analyst to resist the roles of rescuer, failure, or victim-roles rooted in the analyst's own unconscious fantasies.
What are the origins of creativity and how can we develop it - whether within ourselves or in others? Not only does Playing and Reality address these questions, it also tackles many more that surround the fundamental issue of the individual self and its relationship with the outside world. In this landmark book of twentieth-century psychology, Winnicott shows the reader how, through the attentive nurturing of creativity from the earliest years, every individual has the opportunity to enjoy a rich and rewarding cultural life. Today, as the 'hothousing' and testing of children begins at an ever-younger age, Winnicott's classic text is a more urgent and topical read than ever before. © 1971 D. W. Winnicott, © 2005 Preface to the Routledge Classics edition, F. Robert Rodman.
The patient's containment of the analyst's affect occurs in a broad range of situations that extend far beyond the more visible instances when the analyst is directly expressive of his or her own affects. This paper begins to explore how patients help analysts contain various kinds of affects within the analytic process, particularly more routine and less heroic types of containment. Although this containment is generally a far less prominent feature of analytic work than is the containment provided by the analyst for the patient, it is omnipresent. Routine elements of containment that the patient provides for the analyst involve working with the knowledge of the limits of the other—including the possibility that in a long-term treatment the patient will often get to know quite well some of the quotidian aspects of the analyst's personality and its relation to the patient's conflicts. Mutual aspects of containment are extremely important in the expression and titration of anger and disappointment, desire, hope, humor, and the negotiation of psychic possibility within the analytic dyad.
Review of book: The Musical Edge of Therapeutic Dialogue by Steven H. Knoblauch, Hillsdale, NJ: Analytic Press, 2000, 175 pp. Reviewed by Alexander Stein.
Reviews the book, The bonds of love: Psychoanalysis, feminism, and the problem of domination by Jessica Benjamin (1988). This book uses psychoanalytic theory and feminist criticism to consider the problem of domination, especially the persistence of women's subordination by men. Some of the topics in the book discussed in this review include the pleasures of attunement in infancy, male childhood development; paternal authority, and oedipal theory. The reviewer contends that this book is well-written and sophisticated and explains the problem of domination while also offering a solution of mutual recognition. It is an important contribution to current revisions of psychoanalytic theory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
TOPIC The utility of transference and countertransference in professional nursing relationships.
PURPOSE To provide an introductory text for nurses new to these concepts.
SOURCES Literature specific to transference and countertransference illustrated by examples related to professional practice.
CONCLUSIONS Transference and countertransference influence relationships in ways that under certain conditions may be unhelpful to all concerned. Understanding how transference and countertransference manifest themselves has implications for the safe structuring of professional relationships.
This paper describes the process of splitting that leads to the establishment of a set of 'versions' of the self and the object, and the relationship between them. The author suggests that the mechanism of reassurance is called into play when a particular anxiety-laden version becomes central, disturbing the patient's psychic equilibrium. The patient then strives to restore the state that he has lost, either in phantasy, or by attempting to draw the analyst into a familiar enactment. A brief description is given of a patient who felt most threatened by the prospect of the analyst being able to think for himself. This challenged more familiar and comforting versions of the two of them involved in the repetitive enactment of earlier object relationships. It is suggested that, paradoxically, the analyst's capacity to make his own observations and judgments invokes for the patient the presence of a third figure, with all the accompanying oedipal anxieties and threats. However, the patient's experience of true reassurance is ultimately derived from his belief that he has not succeeded in replacing the oedipal triangular relationship with one in which he and the analyst are exclusively involved with one another.
Analytic work based on the intersubjective view of two participating subjectivities requires discipline rooted in an orientation to the structural conditions of thirdness. The author proposes a theory that includes an early form of thirdness involving union experiences and accommodation, called the one in the third, as well as later moral and symbolic forms of thirdness that introduce differentiation, the third in the one. Clinically, the concept of a co-created or shared intersubjective thirdness helps to elucidate the breakdown into the twoness of complementarity in impasses and enactments and suggests how recognition is restored through surrender.
The author examines the notion of the third within contemporary intersubjectivity theory. He utilizes a variety of metaphors (the triangle, the seesaw, strange attractors, and the compass) in an effort to explain this often misunderstood concept in a clear and readily usable manner. An argument is made to the effect that intersubjectivity theory has direct implications for clinical practice, and that the notion of the third is particularly useful in understanding what happens in and in resolving clinical impasses and stalemates. Specifically, the author suggests that certain forms of self-disclosure are best understood as attempts to create a third point of reference, thus opening up psychic space for self-reflection and mentalization. He provides a clinical case as well as a number of briefer vignettes to illustrate the theoretical concepts and to suggest specific modifications of the psychoanalyst's stance that give the patient greater access to the inner workings of the analyst's mind. This introduces a third that facilitates the gradual transformation from relations of complementarity to relations of mutuality.
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