Intersubjective Field Research Articles

Use of the Group Therapist's Personality Via the Countertransferences

Rather than use the term therapist personality, the author uses an operational definition of countertransference to examine the intersubjective field between group therapist and individual patients, the group, and subgroups. Differentiating between objective and subjective countertransferences, the author traces their sources to the transferences and resistances that arise from individuals, subgroups, and the group-as-a-whole. The transferences, resistances, and their related countertransferences are then integrated with enactments and history to create interventions. The charismatic leader makes no differentiation between the countertransferences and primarily acts on impulse or a rigid system.

Empathic Networks: Symbolic and Subsymbolic Representations in the Intersubjective Field

An attempt is made to elaborate an analytic event consisting of a dream dreamt by the analyst and a corresponding memory told for the first time the next morning by the patient, both of which reflect the same content. The question that is addressed is, how did these same ideas occur simultaneously to both patient and analyst? The analytic dyad is envisioned as an integrated system, and connectionism is used to formulate the concept of an empathic network, with the assumption that the symbolic content (e.g., imagery, dreams, accounts of memories) emerges from an integrated system having both individual and personal representations and systemic and parallel distributed representations.

Ethics: A Gestalt of Values/The Values of Gestalt: A Next Step

AbstractThe possibility of the existence of a Gestalt ethics, which can be derived from Gestalt theory, is explored. The roots of constructionist, intersubjective Gestalt field theory are reviewed from Ehrenfels's contribution through those of the Gestalt psychologists, Lewin, Goldstein, and Goodman. This theory highlights how person and environment are interconnected. From the theoretical existence and importance of this interconnection, together with an understanding of the field conditions of support and shame, a Gestalt ethics does emerge. A key ethic emerges as: ethical solutions must be field solutions, that is, solutions that further the development of both the individual and the environment. The possibility of a field theory-derived definition of health is also discussed.

Transferences Toward the Co-Therapist Couple: Triadic Relationships and Selfobject Needs

This paper examines transferences toward the male/female co-therapists within a developmental context, using concepts from self psychology, intersubjectivity, and infant research. In addition, it proposes that some individuals have selfobject needs specifically related to the parental unit, so triadic relationships can influence one's development. Clinical examples elucidate the repetitive and selfobject dimensions of the transferences within the intersubjective field formed by the triad of a patient and the male and female co-therapists.

An Ethics for the Psychoanalyst in the Postmodern Age

The psychoanalyst's ethics at issue - referred to a paradigm of complexity in the postmodern age - is to affirm as a fundamental value the recognition of determinism of unconscious desire, which implies a renunciation to any exercise of power, even the power of influence that can guide and support. Intending through interpretation of the partial truth of desire to be accomplished as a process that subverts the subject's relation with its own history, psychoanalysis, as it undoes the imaginary fixations of the subject, cannot predict the ?politics? of the unconscious desire. Nor can it confront the possibilities of decision and choice of a relative and finite freedom. Using the interpretative elaboration of an intersubjective field of values, the psychoanalytic practice reveals the limits of a knowledge restricted by the context where the interpretation takes place. It differentiates between deciphering and decoding by emphasizing the attribute of the uncognoscibility of the unconscious Thus it reveals the cryptogram, a cipher designed as an ambiguous puzzle that is not exhausted by interpretation as a symbolic act, and it refers to the unrepresentable and the inaccessibility of the real.

Shame and Bulimia - A Sickness of the Soul

"Abstract: Where shame plays a central role, as it does in eating disorders, Kaufinan (1 989) beIieves that 'accepted theories and methods of treatment have largely failed'. In this paper I argue that it is likely that the bulimic client has experienced insuficient support in the field for important needs, and consequently, has experienced a significant rupture in the intersubjective field. Bulimic behaviour is their creative adjustment to their current environment, the client's way of managing 'unacceptable' feelings and needs. I conclude that it is essential that the therapist understands the dynamics of shame and knows how to work with the client's shame response in a way that enables the buhic client to meal the hidden (messy) part of herseifl. In this paper I offer an overview of the cmt thinking on shame hm a Gestalt perspective and relate this to the cIinical practice of working with bulimic clients, dmwhg on real case material to illustrate the implications for clinical practice. Key wad: shame, Bulimia Nervosa, eating disorders, intex~ubjectivity~ sense of self, co-created field."

Future and Potentiality in the Psychoanalytic Process

A perspective is delineated on the dimension of the future in the psychoanalytic situation. Clinical manifestations are presented of the tension between actuality and potentiality that characterizes the treatment situation. This tension, an aspect of the intersubjective field that exists between patient and analyst, involves the analyst's hopes, expectations, anticipations, sense of purpose, and therapeutic intent, facets of the analyst's subjectivity that affect the clinical process. The question of the patient's individuality and autonomy is raised in the context of the notion of the "true self." To understand potentiality in the clinical situation, it is argued, the intersubjective emphasis on the inevitable mutual influence between analyst and patient must be complemented by a view of the self as emerging from within and gaining coherence through the unfolding of inherent dispositions and potentialities.

The Psychodynamic Treatment of Resistance with a Religious Patient from the Perspective of Intersubjectivity Theory

The analysis of resistances with religious patients from the perspective of intersubjectivity theory offers insights into the resolution of therapeutic impasses by focusing attention on intersubjective conjunctions and disjunctions (Stolorow, Brandchaft, & Atwood, 1987). Understanding resistance as an aspect of the intersubjective field between therapist and patient, which is co-determined by both participants, greatly assists in the treatment of difficult patients. Resistance analysis in the case of a patient using religious references as resistance is presented from an intersubjective perspective on psychodynamic treatment.

Applying Stolorow's theory of intersubjectivity to Hendrix's imago techniques

In the psychological domain, intersubjectivity is defined by the intersection between differently organized subjective systems. Infant research has demonstrated that the intersubjective field is constituted by the reciprocal influence of both the infant's and the caregiver's self‐regulating systems. The work of Stolorow and his colleagues is discussed in relation to the dynamics of the dyadic system between intimate partners. The intersubjective perspective offers an empathic and pragmatic stance from which to understand how self‐structure is constantly affecting and being affected in the interaction with a significant other. Harville Hendrix's dialogue technique is described as part of a process for treating couples in which partners are taught tools for differentiated and empathic communication, thereby enacting a corrective cognitive and emotional experience.

Implicit relational knowing: Its role in development and psychoanalytic treatment

It is increasingly apparent that something than interpretation is needed to bring about change in psychoanalytic treatment. Drawing on clinical and developmental observations, we propose that interactional processes from birth onward give rise to a form of procedural knowledge regarding how to do things with intimate others, knowledge we call implicit relational knowing. This knowing is distinct from conscious verbalizable knowledge and from the dynamic unconscious. The implicit relational know- ing of patient and therapist intersect to create an intersubjective field that includes reasonably accurate sensings of each person's ways of being with others, sensings we call the real relationship. This inter- subjective field becomes more complex and articulated with repeated patient- therapist encounters, giving rise to emergent new possibilities for more coherent and adaptive forms of interaction. During a trans- actional event that we term a moment of meeting, a new dyadic possibility crystallizes when the two persons achieve the dual goals of complementary fitted actions and joint intersubjective recognition in a new form. We argue that such moments of meeting shift the relational anticipations of each partner and allow for new forms of agency and shared experience to be expressed and elaborated.

Symbolic Participation

Projective drawings have long been an invaluable tool in understanding the nonverbal, preconscious world of the patient, and it is well established that the drawings of children who have suffered physical and sexual abuse display predictable variations in the representation of visual symbols. However, careful attention to the individual symbol system of young children can reveal the unexpected, particular ways that trauma may be recorded in nonverbal and kinesthetic dimensions, especially when the trauma occurs before the acquisition of language. This essay explores the history of the psychoanalytic approach to the visual arts and the central ideas about the process of image-making in response to loss. A case is then presented in which one child's idiosyncratic visual symbol became a powerful communication between patient and therapist, through its ability to evoke a mutual, nonverbal, kinesthetic experience. Through the mechanism of projection, visual symbols can serve as a meeting ground in which the therapist may be able to participate in some of the nonverbal aspects of the patient's experience. In this instance, the emergence of a stable visual symbol in the intersubjective field facilitated first an unconscious identification with the patient and then a conscious understanding that had a mutative impact on the child's ability to organize nonverbal affect states within the therapy. This chapter illustrates the utility of a psychoanalytic understanding and attention to symbolic communication in a child whose manifest anxiety was phenotypically indistinguishable from Attention Deficit Disorder.

Silence and communication: nonverbal dialogue and therapeutic action

The subject of this article is silence as communication, with the starting point in the silences of three patients in treatment—in one of them his silences lasted up to a year. Silence is also seen as a specific dimension linked to speech, as the treatment of a third patient shows. The nonverbal interaction between patient and analyst is illustrated. This interaction led to a developmental process in each of the patients, characterized by fusion and separation processes, which included a development of three-dimensionality. The curative process taking place in each of the three, not through verbalisation but through the relation, is understood in the light of Modell's (1990) concept of “dependent/containing transference”. The treatment results demonstrate that the “dependent transference” is curative in itself when the therapeutic setting is maintained. The analyst's inner work during the dependent transference is described: a form of nonverbal participation and joint creativity in the intersubjective field.

Interaction and Interpretation: “How Can I Tell What I Think till I See What I Say?”

Abstract In my paper I elaborate my thinking on the intersubjective space or field, unfolding between the analyst and the patient, where both influence each other consciously and unconsciously in an ongoing dialectics. Different factors, which influence us as psychoanalysts in our choice of theoretical school are discussed. My point of view is that we invest emotionally in different theories, which then function as a sort of inner discussion partners, open for new interpretations or “readings”, even if they in a way are consistent. Bion's theory concerning the development of thought and thinking is discussed; The clinical vignettes make his underlining of the emotional experiencies, as the driving factor in transforming sensations and emotions to higher levels of symbolization, more comprehensible.

Situating Cultural Politics: Fringe Festivals and the Production of Spaces of Intersubjectivity

Canada's fringe festivals are important interventions in the discourses and institutions framing Canadian theatre, leading some to recognize them as sites of a radical cultural politics. Most commentators have placed their attention on performance at these events, but in this paper, the focus is on the manner in which these events reorganize urban spaces into festival spaces, constructing informal discursive arenas within which the interaction of patrons, artists, and organizers is encouraged, and which situates performance, display, and the negotiation of social identities within an intersubjective field less influenced by certain constraints in traditional theatre. What is often overlooked, however, is that these discursive arenas are constructed within, at the same time as they engage, the social and spatial organization of the city, and are therefore marked by certain exclusions and inclusions. By refusing to abstract these festivals, as ‘artistic events’, attention can be paid to their ‘topography’, to explore the relations between cultural practice, social identity, and the organization of the city.

Comment on ?gender as an element in the intersubjective field: The female therapist and the male patient? by Rosemary Lukton

Comment on ?gender as an element in the intersubjective field: The female therapist and the male patient? by Rosemary Lukton

Gender as an element in the intersubjective field: The female therapist and the male patient

Gender identity is a fundamental component of core identity and it lays the ground plan for the creation of the specifics of the individual's self representation through varied early self- and object experience. This paper seeks to illuminate some of the unconscious dynamics emerging out of profound developmental differences between women and men. The effects of these unconscious dynamics upon the relationship between the male patient and the female therapist are examined, drawing upon transferential and extratransferential phenomena. Illustrations are presented, demonstrating interpretive work directed toward resolution of conflicts around male identity and aimed at fostering self-object differentiation.

On knowing one's patient inside out: The aesthetics of unconscious communication∗1

“Knowing one's patient inside out” is a metaphor that is intended to capture the paradoxical quality of the intersubjective field that we call the analytic relationship. The interface among trauma, dissociation, and regression is discussed in the context of unconscious communication as a transferential enactment of unsymbolized experience.The view is offered that for certain patients in particular, past experience is not so much unconscious as “frozen in time” and that a key element of the psychoanalytic relationship is bridging dissociated aspects of self through the creation of a dyadic experiential field that is both “inside” and “outside.” The writings of Michael Balint, D. W. Winnicott, and several other British object relational theorists are explored in the context of a contemporary interpersonal psychoanalytic perspective.

Intersubjective Processes in Psychotherapy

An intersubjective field is created by the interplay between the subjective inner worlds of the patient and therapist. The study of intersubjective processes has been based loosely on the paradigm of infant and caregiver interactions with subsequent empathic appreciation of each others' subjective realities. This approach is not necessarily dependent on an acceptance of a self-psychology model. Dyadic interactional dynamics can be explored and understood using different theoretical models. It may be therapeutic to be able to communicate and clarify significant moments of shared mutuality and affects, which when put into words often uncover previously repetitive and frustrating misunderstandings and expectations.