Sea: An Exploration of Figurability Through the Triad of Training Clinician-Supervisee-Analysand

Abstract

Using the work of the Botellas (2005), Laplanche (1999), and Levine (2012), I aim to examine unconscious communications between patient and clinician and the transformational process that moves intersubjectively from unrepresented toward represented mental states. During my work with Sea, sessions from my own analysis revealed content that I failed to recognize as my own; unconscious untranslatable messages given to me by her that were half understood during my supervision, and crystalized only during my own analysis. Using my own changes in representational states that became available to me during this shifting of positions, I worked as Sea's “double,” sharing with her my ability to consolidate her internal representations, while strengthening her ability to reflect in the face of potentially self-destructive actions. Weaving in my own analysis with our therapy sessions, I show how regressive states from the clinician create the potential place from which the patient can form his or her own representations of that which had formerly remained un-representable because of traumatic origins. I discuss the ways in which this process might be multi-directional.