THE SHAPING OF EXPERIENCE

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper explores how we sometimes manage, and often fail, to communicate the ‘feel’ of live experience. Since poetry makes a craft and vocation of this pursuit, the writings of poets are brought to bear on the process. I introduce the idea of containing forms, using the term containment in its everyday sense. My argument, however, owes much to Winnicott, Stern and Bion, Winnicott's transitional object exemplifying an early containing structure, and Stern's ‘attunement’ suggesting ways that later containing structures might arise out of mother-infant dialogue. Bion's more specific notions of containment and transformation are not explored. Following Langer, I suggest that feeling is better communicated through presentational rather than discursive symbols, such forms being concrete, sensory, and isomorphic in some way to that which is being shared. With such presentational symbols, resonance and dialogue between forms are more important than explanatory meaning and some implications of this for therapeutic discourse are discussed.