The Analyst’s Private Space: Spontaneity, Ritual, Psychotherapeutic Action, and Self-Care

Abstract

The contemplation, containing, and linking that circulate within the analyst’s private space are positioned as key to states of psychic equivalence (the melding of psychic reality and material reality) and to sustained states of unknowing, which are held to be necessary for analytic work and fantastic spontaneity. These modes of practice are considered as they relate to rituals that promote the analyst’s self care. An account of a psychotherapy with a 5-year-old electively mute girl is offered to illustrate the work undertaken in the analyst’s private space, as he seeks to build and sustain potential space and the possibilities borne through play.