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The Mystery of Analytical Work: Weavings from Jung and Bion
This book provides an exploration of the clinical practice of psychoanalysis and analytical psychology. It explores the ways psychoanalysts and other clinicians are taught to evade direct emotional connections with their patients. Sullivan, suggesting that relatedness is the basis of emotional health, examines the universal struggle between socially oriented energies that struggle toward truth and narcissistic impulses that push us to take refuge in lies. She maintains that, rather than making interpretations, it is the clinician’s capacity to bring relatedness to the clinical encounter which is the crucial factor.
Examining the work of both Jung and Bion, Sullivan draws on the overlap between their ideas on the psyche and the nature of the unconscious. The book uses clinical examples to examine the implications that these perspectives have for the practising therapist.
Specific areas of discussion
the creative unconsciousthe structure of narcissismtransformation in analytic work.
New modes of listening and relating that deepen analytic work and greatly facilitate transformative changes are described in easy-to-follow language that will help the therapist to find new approaches to a wide range of patients. The Mystery of Analytical Work will be of interest to Jungians, psychoanalysts and all those with an interest in analytic work.
Examining the work of both Jung and Bion, Sullivan draws on the overlap between their ideas on the psyche and the nature of the unconscious. The book uses clinical examples to examine the implications that these perspectives have for the practising therapist.
Specific areas of discussion
the creative unconsciousthe structure of narcissismtransformation in analytic work.
New modes of listening and relating that deepen analytic work and greatly facilitate transformative changes are described in easy-to-follow language that will help the therapist to find new approaches to a wide range of patients. The Mystery of Analytical Work will be of interest to Jungians, psychoanalysts and all those with an interest in analytic work.
- GenresPsychology
282 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2009
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66 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
December 1, 2013
Brilliant! A must read - full of theoretical and clinical insights.
November 4, 2024
Sophisticated command of psychoanalytic theory and theoreticians and a commitment to utilizing insights of depth psychology/psychoanalytic theory and also the impact of a relational practice. The author is a pleasure to read, in part, because she clearly understands the work of other theorists that I could probably quote but not explain to others more than a few sentence gloss.
P6-7 self-centered vs relational approach
P10 Bion & Jung; Winnicott “the best therapy available” vs rules
P12 devotion: when it doesn’t lead to love
P13-4. Therapeutic rx
P15 growth trying to happen
P17 role of suffering and capacity to suffer
P19 listening vs holding (danger of holding). Do I agree?
P20 devotional attention as the main gift of tx (note: dyadic work w/plant/psychedilics)
P24 compassion for abusive mother
P25 help as anti-relational/anti-healing
P27 transference & growth
P31 Freud & unconscious – solid, brief explication
P32 Jung: goal of life/analysis
P34-5, 41 Freud vs Jung & Bion: materialist vs idealists
P43 client as known & unknown
P44 Bion vs Jung: impersonal infinite vs pagan archetypes
P49-50 Jung: self-knowledge related to infinite internal forces
P64-5 Self: childhood, Eden/God, therapy
P68 therapy goals: (Bion) being oneself vs knowing oneself (Freud?)
P69 repressed unconscious vs O/collective unconscious
P72 exp owned as rx (relatedness descr similar to ceremony re processing trauma (Winnicott)
P73 Jungian complexes, role of
P75 Jung, Bion on suffering
P78 difft kinds of emotional experience
P81-2, 84, 190 making experience thinkable
P85-6 PS <-> D (Klein, Bion) also; disintegration/integration; patience/security
P93 therapist need for own growth
P94-5 Analysis creating dreaming capacity; “the creation of new meanings”
P96-7 when tx experiences articulate ct as unfindable, not interesting, disconnected, boring (Bion; Astraea; Andrea) – intellectualism as defense
P103 Jung on wholeness as flipside of capacity for I-Thou
P118, 120 relatedness vs selfishness
P124-5, 127-31 choice, overwhelm, attachment needs, emotional adulthood (adolescent stoicism not equal to choice)
P132-3 IF I EVER TEACH!
P136-7, 176-7, 202 grief, rage, splitting, joy, potential for emotional adulthood
P138-9, 178, 186 what tx is good for
P140-1 individuation as conflict w/ Nature?
P149-50, 181 narcissism vs Self
P158 raw pain vs mature suffering
P167-70, 174 maturing truth & comforting delusion: confession -> communion
P171 Jung on limits of solitary introspection
P182 emotions & objective facts
P192, 194 rage (Bion) anger writing
P210-11 need for food or love? Dilemma in tx too
P215-16 tx w/o memory or desire but w/ reverie
P217 tx: don’t try/desire to be helpful
P222 not knowing key to tx (beginner’s mind)
P234 Faith
P237 faith vs mastery
P238 ther silent presence as vulnerable
P249 vs victim consciousness
--------------
P3 This is the basic building block of relatedness, whether to oneself or to others: the ability to hold in mind different perspectives. […] To the degree that he feels endanged, he will be thrown back into an unrelated stance where all that matters is his need, his safety.
[…] Our emotional depths are so terrifying that psychologists have historically armed themselves thoroughly with theories and techniques that keep the patient at such a distance as to prevent our awareness of these dangers. […] We are only beginning to recognize the inherent insecurities in our work.
P8 A self-centered me-me-me approach to others and to life is not only frowned upon by society; it is also a pathological perspective that indicates the presence of emotional wounding. But a related approach is a vulnerable one, while a selfish stance offers the illusion of safety. […] I cannot take refuge in the assumption that my eyes see clearly while yours are clouded.
P9 Remembering that unprocessed emotions destroy the possibility of rational thought, what can we say about how the psyche processes emotions?
P14 He must let go of the narcissistic attempt to perfect himself and must shoulder the more soulful goal of becoming his true self, something that includes his weaknesses and inadequacies as well as his strengths. This new attitude can never be fully accepted – there will always be power strivings, too—but when the patient yields to the therapeutic relationship’s demands on his heart, he has begun his descent.
P16 The analyst works to change herself to meet the patient’s needs, not to change him.
P17 […] I would hope that there are enough therapists trying to escape the tentacles of the [DSM] and of managed care to be interested in exploring the poverty of those perspectives that seek to dominate reality. We need to find ways to swim into the murky waters of our lostness rather than getting out of the water to live in the dry desert of certainty.
P18 By considering how difficult it is for anyone to digest emotions, I hope to offer the practitioner a way to recognize disturbances in her patient’s mental processes (as opposed to his choices or behaviors) and to understand the roots of these disturbances. […] And to the extent that the patient can be helped to expand his capacity to think and to diminish his area of reactivity, he will be freer to choose his behavior in ways that foster his expression of who he really is; he will be freed to grow into his true shape.
P22 The most fundamental goal of working with the transference is the transformation of anti-related strivings into relatedness. One of the major ways that the therapist approaches this is by noticing and working with her own anti-related energies as they are constellated in this particular dyad.
P44-5 But a related approach brings an open mind to the table. If the two people are in trouble in one way or another […], the therapist must be as curious (almost always silently) about her own difficulties and blindnesses as she is about the patient’s. She can take this stance because she has faith that between the two of them they will make some sense of the situation. Faith that she, for all her confusion and not knowing and helplessness, will be good enough to contribute enough to the mix to be valuable for the patient’s development. Faith that she can grow enough to meet her patient’s need.
P48 One’s emotional life is always more extensive than one can bear [….]
P51 When we include the Self in our understanding, we see that the unconscious psyche is related to the person. It suggests an inborn relational energy that structures our connection with ourselves. This innate human energy underlies our need for relatedness. When therapists ignore this need, the good food that they have to offer their patients is inadequately processed; it may be indigestible.
P52 […] our emotions trace the path that the Self is taking; they are the Self’s attempt to capture our attention and to tell us the truth of who we are.
P53 A universal complex of psychopathology permeates our contemporary civilization in a way that elevates narcissism to a desirable state and blinds us to its pathology.
P55 Jung describes the psyche’s drive to realize its truth, its separate individuality, and its interpersonal, communal interconnectedness […] as a struggle between the Self demanding realization in the individual’s lived experience, and the “I,” tied to his limiting internal objects, a little self that resists the pain and disorientation of change. Rooted outside of consciousness, the intentional Self seeks to compensate the “I”’s tendency toward a one-sided view of itself since, comprising the totality of the psyche and including all of human inheritance that links us to each other, its view is far broader than that of our puny consciousness.
P56 [cont] The energy of the Self can be personified in the God of Job; it undermines the person’s narcissistic sense of potency, ultimately by forcing her to grapple with infirmity and death.
Jung’s […] unconscious does not blindly seek selfish gratification; it is fueled by the psychological organism’s quest for wholeness, a much broader instinctual drive than an urge toward sexual or aggressive release. Jung conceived of this search for wholeness as reflecting the fundamental psychological impulse. The Self makes O more personal and more numinous or divine, both at once.
P58-9 This theory of the Self offers a vivid confirmation of the fundamental need for relatedness in the therapeutic situation. The basic goal of the Self is to force the conscious person into relationship with his larger self. The central aim of the Self is to foster relatedness. It works to insist that all the different tendencies inside the self, tendencies that our dreams image as different individuals, are given a seat at the table. […] The Self approaches the “I” in an imperious manner, but its goal is an inner society that operates in a related manner. Its demanding approach to the “I” can be seen as validating the analyst’s need to maintain the analytic frame even when it seems to break her patient’s heart’ its goal – the mutually respectful atmosphere of a well-functioning committee – supports the contention that maintaining the frame in a deeply related way is crucial.
P66 O is the absolute Truth of any situation; the Self pushes the person both to give up soothing lies about himself and to recognize who he really is – to get related to himself. But human beings, as we all know, evade true relatedness and lie to themselves extensively. We all work, at least some of the time, to not know ourselves. […]. How does someone recognize his or her true experience and what factors facilitate honestly facing into oneself rather than pretending to be the person one expects or wants to be?
P90 In the therapeutic situation the patient's first job is to associate while the analyst's is to receive those associations in a state of reverie. […] The analyst must, of course, stay empathically connected to the manifest content of the patient's communications. He really is talking about his childhood, his marriage, his work. But he is also talking about the present moment. The patient is unconsciously telling his analyst all the time about the unconscious emotional experience he is having and, via projective identification or other forms of discharge, about the experiences he needs help to have. […]
Psychic healing depends more on emotional experiences than on cognitive understandings. […] The emotional experience that was generated in the discussion with her analyst that led to the insight will also be healing or wounding in a way that her new knowledge about herself cannot be. This is why some analysts go overboard and orient only to the therapeutic relationship- to the transference. […] It is the fundamental thing going on all the time, supporting and potentiating all other levels of the interaction. But there are other levels of the interaction and sometimes it is valuable to pay attention to these, too.
P91 She must hold the fact of her "failure” in a way that fosters curiosity about it rather than excessive distress. Thomas Ogden speaks to the acrobatics needed to accomplish this as "the effort to transform my experience of 'I-ness' (myself as unselfconscious subject) into an experience of me-ness' (myself as object of analytic scrutiny)" (2001. p. 19). [.…]
If we begin with the idea that constrictions in the ability to have life experiences lie at the root of all psychopathology, then we will try to receive the undigested aspects of the patient to begin the process of transforming them into thinkable a elements. By receiving the patient's ß elements the analyst functions as a container, and the more flexible and enduring the container she provides, the more functional the patient's introjected container will be.
P92 In centering herself in her reverie, the well-functioning analyst moves fluidly between states of integration and deintegration (PS <->D); her ability to do so will gradually be introjected by the patient, building the strength of his thinking apparatus.
[…] If the therapist can receive the story at this deeper level as well as at its surface level, she can imagine the experience the patient is currently trying to have with her. This hard-won understanding will then determine her response [….] His experience becomes his own; he possesses it rather than being possessed by it.
P97 I did not understand my job to be helping her to grow the capacity to experience her life. I was caught in an old paradigm, where I imagined that my job was to help her to know about the experiences she was denying, repressing, and projecting.
P116 Winnicott (1971) suggests that the therapist will inevitably fail the patient in the specific way that the patient needs to be failed, meaning in a new version of the way his environment originally failed him. It is the working through of this new failure that enables the patient to work through his old undigested pain.
P117 Relatedness is the basis of health but it also exposes us to interpersonal wounding. We protect ourselves from being hurt by calling up anti-related energies: by denigrating the other in our minds, by erasing him through not-seeing his need, by forgetting his wishes when those wishes would cause us distress. All the pathological tendencies in the psyche push us toward an anti-related approach. Anti-related energies underlie the American culture’s predilection for an extraverted manic “friendliness” that precludes real relatedness because its goal is to make everyone into a friend, bypassing the much more substantial issue of finding the individual(s) with whom one has a real heart connection.
P118 Anti-related energy is narcissistic energy, where “narcissism” carries its colloquial (and mythic) meaning of an egocentric over-valuation of the self. Relatedness and narcissism are the two poles between which human beings are inherently torn.
P119 Depth therapists find overwhelming evidence of patients’ fear of hurting those they love, whether the loved ones are parents or spouses or the therapist herself. Our need for relatedness is a major organizer of our behavior at least from birth on.
But relatedness is a terrible source of suffering in addition to being the wellspring of love and joy, for a related stance is inherently vulnerable.
P123 We need a loving inner or outer other to provide enough safety and protection to make an experience of vulnerability bearable.
P131 Suffering is the sine qua non of development. We need loving experiences of support and cherishment as a foundation that enables to bear the suffering, but it is only through bearing suffering that one can think or create.
P167 Relatedness depends on the attempt to see and bear the truth. When the truth is feared, the “I” seals itself into a solipsistic bubble that shuts out other points of view, whether the perspectives of other people or the perspectives of other parts of himself.
P235 When the individual has developed the capacity for concern, his goal is to be related, but as Winnicott parses the dynamics of object relating we see how it works against relatedness, for true relatedness demands an undefended openness to the other that must include the possibility of hurting the other as well as nurturing him.
Object usage, on the other hand, involves the destruction of the other in fantasy, followed by the startling and wonderful discovery that fantasies can not destroy the other. The other becomes a real person; the subject can believe in her; she is not an extension of himself who can be controlled by his internal mental activities. The distortions inherent in object relating are transcended. The possibility of being one's whole self without compromise is reinforced and a true relationship becomes possible: the other can be valued for her own self. A world of love begins to be created since the need for guilt is obviated. One does not need to be good to make up for one's badness, for the person has learned that the other can survive his badness; loving for its own sake| becomes possible.
Object usage leads to the discovery of an outer reality that exists apart from one's self. One can have faith in the world: it is real -other people exist- and this truth gives the subject a more immediate sense of himself and of the realness of his inner world. The recognition of a real outer reality goes hand in hand with the discovery of a real inner reality that is safe enough to generate faith. […] Fully using another person who survives allays the individual's terror of his own destructiveness. The attempt to dominate life can be renounced for the possibility of relationship has come into being. Our mutual realness takes center stage, enabling us to participate together in the development of our mutual aliveness.
P248-9 Winnicott (1960) […] The person who identifies with the False Self almost always locates that self in the mind. Cut off from the True Self – the self that is rooted in the emotional life and in the body – the individual trapped in a False Self organization tries to solve the problem of living with the intellect – so much more reliable an organ than the heart, which can never be contained or even domesticated and which is so very often irrational, permanently resistant to “logic.” The only difficulty is that living from the mind rather than the heart leaves the person feeling fake and rather dead. A person, like any other mammal, is an emotional creature first; after having an experience, the experience can be considered thoughtfully; thinking first in an attempt to “figure out” the experience at issue is a common and not very fruitful approach.
P250 The analytic venture is a search for transformation in O. Insight per se (transformation in K) may lead to inner growth but it can also defend against it. […] It is good to know oneself, but the goal of analysis is to live one’s life fully, to be oneself. […] If transformations in K involve knowing more about oneself, transformations in O involve becoming more of oneself. Both expand the individual, but the former expansion is potential and the latter realized.
P258 The truth cannot be known, and this truth --- the fundamental mystery of life – is bearable only briefly and only in the context of a loving relationship.
P6-7 self-centered vs relational approach
P10 Bion & Jung; Winnicott “the best therapy available” vs rules
P12 devotion: when it doesn’t lead to love
P13-4. Therapeutic rx
P15 growth trying to happen
P17 role of suffering and capacity to suffer
P19 listening vs holding (danger of holding). Do I agree?
P20 devotional attention as the main gift of tx (note: dyadic work w/plant/psychedilics)
P24 compassion for abusive mother
P25 help as anti-relational/anti-healing
P27 transference & growth
P31 Freud & unconscious – solid, brief explication
P32 Jung: goal of life/analysis
P34-5, 41 Freud vs Jung & Bion: materialist vs idealists
P43 client as known & unknown
P44 Bion vs Jung: impersonal infinite vs pagan archetypes
P49-50 Jung: self-knowledge related to infinite internal forces
P64-5 Self: childhood, Eden/God, therapy
P68 therapy goals: (Bion) being oneself vs knowing oneself (Freud?)
P69 repressed unconscious vs O/collective unconscious
P72 exp owned as rx (relatedness descr similar to ceremony re processing trauma (Winnicott)
P73 Jungian complexes, role of
P75 Jung, Bion on suffering
P78 difft kinds of emotional experience
P81-2, 84, 190 making experience thinkable
P85-6 PS <-> D (Klein, Bion) also; disintegration/integration; patience/security
P93 therapist need for own growth
P94-5 Analysis creating dreaming capacity; “the creation of new meanings”
P96-7 when tx experiences articulate ct as unfindable, not interesting, disconnected, boring (Bion; Astraea; Andrea) – intellectualism as defense
P103 Jung on wholeness as flipside of capacity for I-Thou
P118, 120 relatedness vs selfishness
P124-5, 127-31 choice, overwhelm, attachment needs, emotional adulthood (adolescent stoicism not equal to choice)
P132-3 IF I EVER TEACH!
P136-7, 176-7, 202 grief, rage, splitting, joy, potential for emotional adulthood
P138-9, 178, 186 what tx is good for
P140-1 individuation as conflict w/ Nature?
P149-50, 181 narcissism vs Self
P158 raw pain vs mature suffering
P167-70, 174 maturing truth & comforting delusion: confession -> communion
P171 Jung on limits of solitary introspection
P182 emotions & objective facts
P192, 194 rage (Bion) anger writing
P210-11 need for food or love? Dilemma in tx too
P215-16 tx w/o memory or desire but w/ reverie
P217 tx: don’t try/desire to be helpful
P222 not knowing key to tx (beginner’s mind)
P234 Faith
P237 faith vs mastery
P238 ther silent presence as vulnerable
P249 vs victim consciousness
--------------
P3 This is the basic building block of relatedness, whether to oneself or to others: the ability to hold in mind different perspectives. […] To the degree that he feels endanged, he will be thrown back into an unrelated stance where all that matters is his need, his safety.
[…] Our emotional depths are so terrifying that psychologists have historically armed themselves thoroughly with theories and techniques that keep the patient at such a distance as to prevent our awareness of these dangers. […] We are only beginning to recognize the inherent insecurities in our work.
P8 A self-centered me-me-me approach to others and to life is not only frowned upon by society; it is also a pathological perspective that indicates the presence of emotional wounding. But a related approach is a vulnerable one, while a selfish stance offers the illusion of safety. […] I cannot take refuge in the assumption that my eyes see clearly while yours are clouded.
P9 Remembering that unprocessed emotions destroy the possibility of rational thought, what can we say about how the psyche processes emotions?
P14 He must let go of the narcissistic attempt to perfect himself and must shoulder the more soulful goal of becoming his true self, something that includes his weaknesses and inadequacies as well as his strengths. This new attitude can never be fully accepted – there will always be power strivings, too—but when the patient yields to the therapeutic relationship’s demands on his heart, he has begun his descent.
P16 The analyst works to change herself to meet the patient’s needs, not to change him.
P17 […] I would hope that there are enough therapists trying to escape the tentacles of the [DSM] and of managed care to be interested in exploring the poverty of those perspectives that seek to dominate reality. We need to find ways to swim into the murky waters of our lostness rather than getting out of the water to live in the dry desert of certainty.
P18 By considering how difficult it is for anyone to digest emotions, I hope to offer the practitioner a way to recognize disturbances in her patient’s mental processes (as opposed to his choices or behaviors) and to understand the roots of these disturbances. […] And to the extent that the patient can be helped to expand his capacity to think and to diminish his area of reactivity, he will be freer to choose his behavior in ways that foster his expression of who he really is; he will be freed to grow into his true shape.
P22 The most fundamental goal of working with the transference is the transformation of anti-related strivings into relatedness. One of the major ways that the therapist approaches this is by noticing and working with her own anti-related energies as they are constellated in this particular dyad.
P44-5 But a related approach brings an open mind to the table. If the two people are in trouble in one way or another […], the therapist must be as curious (almost always silently) about her own difficulties and blindnesses as she is about the patient’s. She can take this stance because she has faith that between the two of them they will make some sense of the situation. Faith that she, for all her confusion and not knowing and helplessness, will be good enough to contribute enough to the mix to be valuable for the patient’s development. Faith that she can grow enough to meet her patient’s need.
P48 One’s emotional life is always more extensive than one can bear [….]
P51 When we include the Self in our understanding, we see that the unconscious psyche is related to the person. It suggests an inborn relational energy that structures our connection with ourselves. This innate human energy underlies our need for relatedness. When therapists ignore this need, the good food that they have to offer their patients is inadequately processed; it may be indigestible.
P52 […] our emotions trace the path that the Self is taking; they are the Self’s attempt to capture our attention and to tell us the truth of who we are.
P53 A universal complex of psychopathology permeates our contemporary civilization in a way that elevates narcissism to a desirable state and blinds us to its pathology.
P55 Jung describes the psyche’s drive to realize its truth, its separate individuality, and its interpersonal, communal interconnectedness […] as a struggle between the Self demanding realization in the individual’s lived experience, and the “I,” tied to his limiting internal objects, a little self that resists the pain and disorientation of change. Rooted outside of consciousness, the intentional Self seeks to compensate the “I”’s tendency toward a one-sided view of itself since, comprising the totality of the psyche and including all of human inheritance that links us to each other, its view is far broader than that of our puny consciousness.
P56 [cont] The energy of the Self can be personified in the God of Job; it undermines the person’s narcissistic sense of potency, ultimately by forcing her to grapple with infirmity and death.
Jung’s […] unconscious does not blindly seek selfish gratification; it is fueled by the psychological organism’s quest for wholeness, a much broader instinctual drive than an urge toward sexual or aggressive release. Jung conceived of this search for wholeness as reflecting the fundamental psychological impulse. The Self makes O more personal and more numinous or divine, both at once.
P58-9 This theory of the Self offers a vivid confirmation of the fundamental need for relatedness in the therapeutic situation. The basic goal of the Self is to force the conscious person into relationship with his larger self. The central aim of the Self is to foster relatedness. It works to insist that all the different tendencies inside the self, tendencies that our dreams image as different individuals, are given a seat at the table. […] The Self approaches the “I” in an imperious manner, but its goal is an inner society that operates in a related manner. Its demanding approach to the “I” can be seen as validating the analyst’s need to maintain the analytic frame even when it seems to break her patient’s heart’ its goal – the mutually respectful atmosphere of a well-functioning committee – supports the contention that maintaining the frame in a deeply related way is crucial.
P66 O is the absolute Truth of any situation; the Self pushes the person both to give up soothing lies about himself and to recognize who he really is – to get related to himself. But human beings, as we all know, evade true relatedness and lie to themselves extensively. We all work, at least some of the time, to not know ourselves. […]. How does someone recognize his or her true experience and what factors facilitate honestly facing into oneself rather than pretending to be the person one expects or wants to be?
P90 In the therapeutic situation the patient's first job is to associate while the analyst's is to receive those associations in a state of reverie. […] The analyst must, of course, stay empathically connected to the manifest content of the patient's communications. He really is talking about his childhood, his marriage, his work. But he is also talking about the present moment. The patient is unconsciously telling his analyst all the time about the unconscious emotional experience he is having and, via projective identification or other forms of discharge, about the experiences he needs help to have. […]
Psychic healing depends more on emotional experiences than on cognitive understandings. […] The emotional experience that was generated in the discussion with her analyst that led to the insight will also be healing or wounding in a way that her new knowledge about herself cannot be. This is why some analysts go overboard and orient only to the therapeutic relationship- to the transference. […] It is the fundamental thing going on all the time, supporting and potentiating all other levels of the interaction. But there are other levels of the interaction and sometimes it is valuable to pay attention to these, too.
P91 She must hold the fact of her "failure” in a way that fosters curiosity about it rather than excessive distress. Thomas Ogden speaks to the acrobatics needed to accomplish this as "the effort to transform my experience of 'I-ness' (myself as unselfconscious subject) into an experience of me-ness' (myself as object of analytic scrutiny)" (2001. p. 19). [.…]
If we begin with the idea that constrictions in the ability to have life experiences lie at the root of all psychopathology, then we will try to receive the undigested aspects of the patient to begin the process of transforming them into thinkable a elements. By receiving the patient's ß elements the analyst functions as a container, and the more flexible and enduring the container she provides, the more functional the patient's introjected container will be.
P92 In centering herself in her reverie, the well-functioning analyst moves fluidly between states of integration and deintegration (PS <->D); her ability to do so will gradually be introjected by the patient, building the strength of his thinking apparatus.
[…] If the therapist can receive the story at this deeper level as well as at its surface level, she can imagine the experience the patient is currently trying to have with her. This hard-won understanding will then determine her response [….] His experience becomes his own; he possesses it rather than being possessed by it.
P97 I did not understand my job to be helping her to grow the capacity to experience her life. I was caught in an old paradigm, where I imagined that my job was to help her to know about the experiences she was denying, repressing, and projecting.
P116 Winnicott (1971) suggests that the therapist will inevitably fail the patient in the specific way that the patient needs to be failed, meaning in a new version of the way his environment originally failed him. It is the working through of this new failure that enables the patient to work through his old undigested pain.
P117 Relatedness is the basis of health but it also exposes us to interpersonal wounding. We protect ourselves from being hurt by calling up anti-related energies: by denigrating the other in our minds, by erasing him through not-seeing his need, by forgetting his wishes when those wishes would cause us distress. All the pathological tendencies in the psyche push us toward an anti-related approach. Anti-related energies underlie the American culture’s predilection for an extraverted manic “friendliness” that precludes real relatedness because its goal is to make everyone into a friend, bypassing the much more substantial issue of finding the individual(s) with whom one has a real heart connection.
P118 Anti-related energy is narcissistic energy, where “narcissism” carries its colloquial (and mythic) meaning of an egocentric over-valuation of the self. Relatedness and narcissism are the two poles between which human beings are inherently torn.
P119 Depth therapists find overwhelming evidence of patients’ fear of hurting those they love, whether the loved ones are parents or spouses or the therapist herself. Our need for relatedness is a major organizer of our behavior at least from birth on.
But relatedness is a terrible source of suffering in addition to being the wellspring of love and joy, for a related stance is inherently vulnerable.
P123 We need a loving inner or outer other to provide enough safety and protection to make an experience of vulnerability bearable.
P131 Suffering is the sine qua non of development. We need loving experiences of support and cherishment as a foundation that enables to bear the suffering, but it is only through bearing suffering that one can think or create.
P167 Relatedness depends on the attempt to see and bear the truth. When the truth is feared, the “I” seals itself into a solipsistic bubble that shuts out other points of view, whether the perspectives of other people or the perspectives of other parts of himself.
P235 When the individual has developed the capacity for concern, his goal is to be related, but as Winnicott parses the dynamics of object relating we see how it works against relatedness, for true relatedness demands an undefended openness to the other that must include the possibility of hurting the other as well as nurturing him.
Object usage, on the other hand, involves the destruction of the other in fantasy, followed by the startling and wonderful discovery that fantasies can not destroy the other. The other becomes a real person; the subject can believe in her; she is not an extension of himself who can be controlled by his internal mental activities. The distortions inherent in object relating are transcended. The possibility of being one's whole self without compromise is reinforced and a true relationship becomes possible: the other can be valued for her own self. A world of love begins to be created since the need for guilt is obviated. One does not need to be good to make up for one's badness, for the person has learned that the other can survive his badness; loving for its own sake| becomes possible.
Object usage leads to the discovery of an outer reality that exists apart from one's self. One can have faith in the world: it is real -other people exist- and this truth gives the subject a more immediate sense of himself and of the realness of his inner world. The recognition of a real outer reality goes hand in hand with the discovery of a real inner reality that is safe enough to generate faith. […] Fully using another person who survives allays the individual's terror of his own destructiveness. The attempt to dominate life can be renounced for the possibility of relationship has come into being. Our mutual realness takes center stage, enabling us to participate together in the development of our mutual aliveness.
P248-9 Winnicott (1960) […] The person who identifies with the False Self almost always locates that self in the mind. Cut off from the True Self – the self that is rooted in the emotional life and in the body – the individual trapped in a False Self organization tries to solve the problem of living with the intellect – so much more reliable an organ than the heart, which can never be contained or even domesticated and which is so very often irrational, permanently resistant to “logic.” The only difficulty is that living from the mind rather than the heart leaves the person feeling fake and rather dead. A person, like any other mammal, is an emotional creature first; after having an experience, the experience can be considered thoughtfully; thinking first in an attempt to “figure out” the experience at issue is a common and not very fruitful approach.
P250 The analytic venture is a search for transformation in O. Insight per se (transformation in K) may lead to inner growth but it can also defend against it. […] It is good to know oneself, but the goal of analysis is to live one’s life fully, to be oneself. […] If transformations in K involve knowing more about oneself, transformations in O involve becoming more of oneself. Both expand the individual, but the former expansion is potential and the latter realized.
P258 The truth cannot be known, and this truth --- the fundamental mystery of life – is bearable only briefly and only in the context of a loving relationship.
June 13, 2020
This book provide examples of amazing interconnections between Jung and Bion thoughts in the field of psychoanalysis. Lot's of examples of real life interactions between analytic and analysand that aimed to show what exactly affected changes in analysand and analytic as well. And in most cases it's not some intellectual knowledge or insight, because great limitation that we have in our capacity to know something, but real experience, that widened inner feel of self, our feel of being alive, what is matter most.
It's not easy read. It's dense, complex, and challenge your patience as real experience of psychoanalysis is, but also in that way is very rewarding. I love how this book written. I love how Barbara again and again stressed what is matter. I very appreciated this book and highly recommended for all practicing specialists in this field.
It's not easy read. It's dense, complex, and challenge your patience as real experience of psychoanalysis is, but also in that way is very rewarding. I love how this book written. I love how Barbara again and again stressed what is matter. I very appreciated this book and highly recommended for all practicing specialists in this field.
April 16, 2017
Best book I've read during year 1 of my Master's Program.
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