The Enduring Hope of Shared Creative Exploration: Some Thoughts on the Work of Philip Bromberg

Abstract

This article discusses several of Philip Bromberg's ideas that have resonated most powerfully for me: the therapist's feelings around his possible role as an agent of the patient's pain; the process of shifting among multiple self-states while remaining the same, applying for both participants; the situating of the self in a relational context, developmentally and in therapy; the core and pervasive impact of the chronic “trauma of nonrecognition,” and the patient's need to be needed as who he is, as a source of pleasure to another person. Building on Philip's characterization of “the analyst's ‘stumbling along and hanging in,”’ the article introduces an expansion of my concept of the referential process to the relational context, as a process of joint creative exploration, including activation of experience, sharing of reveries, and joint reflection; and places this process in the context of current scientific work on embodied cognition and embodied communication.