How I Work with Unconscious Process: A Case Example

Abstract

I begin with a brief theoretical presentation, to orient the reader for the longer clinical case example that follows. The theory, my conceptualization of unconscious process, is the variety of field theory that I have been developing for some years. The theory grows from the idea of unformulated experience, according to which the unconscious is composed of various, shifting potentials, only some of which will be actualized in conscious experience. Which of these potentials is formulated and thereby emerges in consciousness is determined by the nature of the interpersonal field. Constriction in the field reduces the freedom of thought and feeling of the field’s participants. Freeing the field, then, and not understanding via interpretation, becomes the clinical aim.