Birds on a Wire: A discussion of Çevrim’s “The Vulture in the room”

Abstract

ABSTRACT Birds on a Wire is a discussion of Mustafa Çevrim’s, ”The Vulture in the Room”, a beautifully intersubjectively focused clinical paper. This discussion focuses on the bidirectional, self (therapist)regulation and self with “other” (patient and therapist) regulation. Çevrim’s elegant adherence to contemporary Self Psychological/Intersubjective Systems theory is spotlighted, as the emergent self object twinship transference highlights the dyad’s shared understandings through their co-created metaphoric use of bird imagery. Çevrim’s application of a Brandchaftian model of systems of pathological accommodation and his tracking of therapeutic rupture and repair sequences reveals a process of transformation and growth for patient and analyst. Finally, there is a consideration of the impact of what I term, the analyst’s “generative thoughts” on therapeutic process and contextualization.