Transmission of somatic and sensory states in the psychoanalytic relationship

Abstract

We have long known that the concepts of countertransference, mental attitude of the analyst, analytical function of the mind, container/contained relation have become basic instruments of our daily work with our patients. These concepts are imbricated with the function of thinking not only in relation with the patient’s emotions and affects, but also with the emotional and affective states which the patient’s discourse can produce in the analyst. In line with Bion’s container/contained model, I am referring to affects, emotions, feelings that have to be listened to, received, metabolized, deciphered and finally given back to the patient once they have been transformed and decontaminated. Furthermore we know that some of these affects and of these emotions go through and travel also in the analyst’s senses and body areas, i.e. they are embodied in that intra-psychic/somatic area of which Freud sketched the first theoretical outline. In this work, through two clinical examples, I am going to discuss the bodily and sensory, primitive and basic resonances that a patient can create in the analyst and argue that a silent and intimate reflection on these resonances can later become a useful vehicle in understanding the patient’s disharmonies and somatic illnesses.