Whereas pregnancy in the analytic treatment space has been a topic of discussion in several articles in the psychoanalytic literature, it is most often from the perspective of the patient or the pregnant analyst. This article discusses the experience of the non-carrying therapist whose partner is pregnant. A case discussion, highlighting the period of the work with a patient prior to the disclosure of the pregnancy, is presented. This article reviews prior analytic literature on pregnancy, and describes pregnancy as a transformative process that typically involves regression and a re-experiencing of events from early in one’s history. The result for this case is that when the patient and non-carrying analyst regress together, they co-create a more secure analytic attachment, deepening their work. Theoretical ideas concerning unconscious communication, telepathic dreams, and gestation are presented to help the analyst and reader understand the unique experience of working as an expectant non-carrying analyst.

When there are obstacles in the way of being prepared for birth or psychological birth, whether in a perinatal situation or in the analysis of an adult, the analyst must create the conditions in which parents, baby and patient can realize their potentiality for developing. The analyst is bearer of hope in what can feel to be a hopeless world. We offer two clinical vignettes to show the importance of respect, timing and tact in the process of facilitating the freedom to move on towards a creative future. Both vignettes illustrate unconscious communication in action.

ABSTRACTWhat makes some photographs electrify and move us? According to the author, the camera remains in the service of a mental apparatus which looks for the possibility of expressing its contents, both conscious and unconscious—which are all kinds of human needs, desires, dreams and thoughts. The author directs her thoughts in the area of unconscious intersubjectivity, referring most of all to the Freudian theory of unconscious receptivity and unconscious communication, as well as Winnicott's concept of the mirror role of mother and play. Attention is drawn to the uniqueness of the photographic transition of space, in which a special place is occupied by light, which is not only a type of paint, but also a unique partner of fun, thanks to which the form, shape and depth of photography is created. The essay itself is a transitional space between various psychoanalytic narrations and various narrations of photographs in which the paintings of the Polish photographer Edward Hartwig have a special place.

ABSTRACT The outbreak of the pandemic forced a temporary change from an in-person setting to a distance setting via a screen, generating a debate about the viability of the psychoanalytic process in the case of distance settings. This discussion leads us to reconsider the fundamental elements of the setting, such as the hitherto unquestioned co-presence of the bodies of the patient and the analyst in the same space. After reviewing key moments in the evolution of the concept, from Freud to Bleger, and analysing the contemporary situation, including recent IPA reports, it is emphasised that the physical presence of the body, in which psychic life is rooted, is essential to enable unconscious communication. To support this idea, clinical examples and a detailed vignette are presented. In addition, the importance of the frequency of sessions is highlighted, underlining the fact that the quantitative factor is crucial to the nature of psychic life and any attempt to modify it.

ABSTRACT The authors explore the profound impact of child analytic experience on equipping the adult analyst with enhanced analytic sensibility. Virginia Ungar presents detailed clinical vignettes from the first session of a child analysis and Jill Scharff provides discussion. The authors use their combined material to illuminate the ways in which the child analyst’s astute observations and associative capacities, honed through work with children, can enrich an adult analyst’s ability to connect with the unconscious communications of their adult patients. Furthermore, the authors contend that experience in child analysis may foster a deeper understanding of transference and countertransference dynamics, facilitate interpretations offered at the moment of urgency, and encourage the use of concise, patient-resonant language, all of which may contribute significantly to the efficacy of adult analytic work.

ABSTRACT Psychoanalytic infant observation, first introduced by Bick, E. (1964. Notes on infant observation in psychoanalytic training. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 45, 558–566), is a foundational element of psychoanalytic training. It is designed to develop an observer's capacity for emotional containment, analytic abstinence, and sensitivity to unconscious communication prior to clinical work. While widely acknowledged as a transformative learning experience, further exploration is warranted into how infant observation facilitates the development of analytic neutrality, countertransference awareness, and emotional attunement. This paper offers a first-person account of a year-long observation, focusing on the penultimate session—a moment rich with implicit emotional undercurrents as the observation approached its end. Drawing on detailed narrative material, it explores core psychoanalytic themes, including separation, mirroring, triangulation, and the emergence of a holding environment. Theoretical perspectives from Bick, Winnicott, Klein, and Freud inform the interpretive framework. Through sustained non-intrusive presence, the observer encounters the tension between the wish to be understood and the necessity of analytic neutrality. The experience of tolerating uncertainty, bearing emotional complexity, and resisting the urge to intervene mirrors the stance required in psychoanalytic work. Ultimately, this paper illustrates how infant observation cultivates the reflective, observational, and emotional capacities essential to psychoanalytic training.

This essay presents the dreams of a long-term patient over the course of treatment in order to explore the transpersonal potential of the relational unconscious—those open channels of unconscious communication between people. At a key moment, the patient brings in the therapist’s own childhood dream, serving to break a period of impasse and reset the therapy. Dreams and their interpretation reveal the essence of fractal consciousness, by which a sliver of experience can shed light on the whole of the psyche. A fractal model of understanding suggests open boundaries between self/other and self/world at multiple levels. The deep intimacy of ongoing therapy can capitalize on this openness by promoting shared states of physiological resonance between patient and therapist. Such conditions are ripe for facilitating and amplifying uncanny knowing, synchronicities, and other transpersonal experiences.

The authors present a mother's unusual application of play technique in a Chinese at-home situation and their second look at the play material after its discussion in a child consultation group. The Chinese mother, a counsellor who worked with adults and was attending basic child psychology courses, had seen demonstrations of play therapy technique. Worried about her latency age son's development, and eager to repair any harm she felt she had done to him, this mother conducted a series of play sessions to spend meaningful time with her child, satisfy his longing for connection, and hopefully diminish his anxious clinging and controlling of her. She hoped she could help him express his aggression towards her in a constructive way that might support his independence and release his social and academic inhibition. The authors describe the context of the group in which this case came to their attention and of the family in which the child is being raised. They provide a historical context for the application of analytic insight by parents, and discuss the unconscious communication of the play and its power for expressing and easing developmental and relational conflict.

Analytic awareness of the process of meaning-making involves tracking premonitions and intuitions to their sources. As precursors of symbolic processing, premonitions are essential elements in any relationship, including the analytic relationship. They provide unconscious communication that informs and amplifies internal and external body and object relations. These relations facilitate depth and dimensionality between and within persons. They also enable the representational processes to establish psychic structure. When traumatized, a person can lose faith in these processes and defend against relationship. Exploring precursors of the emotional experiences of hope and dread enables the analytic dyad to re-vitalize lost potentials and the representation of experience. A clinical example is given to demonstrate the application of these ideas.

Abstract This preliminary study should be regarded as a pilot piece of research designed specifically to explore some of the unconscious dynamics that operate within the Balint Group process. A brief history is offered by introduction, which aims to set this research in the wider context of the influences that shaped Michael Balint's thinking, particularly the view that the primary obstacles in therapeutic work derive from the analyst's own resistances. The study itself attempts to highlight the presence or absence of ‘domains of implicit relational knowing’ between Balint Group participants, within which ‘moments of meeting’ may take place, leading to a change in the thinking/feeling of the Presenter about their case. It is suggested that such domains emerge through unconscious interactions and that the Group Matrix contains and fosters such activity. The rationale for the use of a 7‐point scale of participants' subjective evaluations of feeling attuned/connected or mis‐attuned/unconnected towards the Group, the Presenter and the Conductor is drawn from Attachment/Neuroscience research. The data gathered from two groups, each engaging in two presentations, reveal patterns of identical scores suggesting the presence of ‘domains’, and marked discrepancy scores suggesting their absence. Sufficient ‘domains’ accompanied a change in thinking/feeling for the Presenter, while few ‘domains’ and marked discrepancy scores did not do so. These observations are tentatively discussed with reference to the early origins of unconscious communications.

Human–Machine Interaction (HMI) systems are integral to various domains and rely on human operators for effective performance. The sense of agency (SoA) is crucial in these systems, as it influences the operator’s concentration and overall efficiency. This review explores the SoA in HMI systems, analyzing its definition, key influencing factors, and methods for enhancement. We provide a comprehensive examination of SoA-related research and suggest strategies for measuring and improving the SoA. Two key research directions are highlighted: the impact of user experience on the SoA, and the role of the SoA in enabling unconscious communication between humans and machines. We propose a development route for HMI systems, outlining a progressive structure across three stages: machine-centric, human-centric, and human–machine integration. Finally, we discuss the potential of gaming platforms as tools for advancing SoA research in HMI systems. Our findings aim to enhance the design and functionality of HMI systems, ensuring improved operator engagement and system performance.

This article looks at the group approach to shared dreams following previous publications, including Dreams In Group Psychotherapy: Theory and Technique (Neri et al. 2002) and further papers1, and a natural extension to a 2022 publication (Friedman, 2022). One innovative perspective is the notion that it is often a ‘collective preoccupation’ which starts a group’s shared elaboration process (dreaming), which to begin with is transmitted through interpersonal and transpersonal communication to a delegated dreamer. Another new perspective is to view dreaming (mental digestion) as the main process of a revised four step ‘dream cycle’. The dream cycle goes from collective preoccupation, through personal dreaming, then through an inner narrative, followed by a potentially shared relational elaboration. This helps to understand that ‘dreamtelling’ is only the fourth step in the shared process of mental ‘digestion’ of peoples’ excessive threats/excitements. In Part I I describe the central approach to a shared dream in group analysis as ‘personal responses first’, meaning the predilection of a free-floating discussion of a dream, involving the whole group’s conscious and unconscious mirroring and resonance, while postponing traditional interpretation. Dreams should be understood as both the result and the motor of group processes. Through the joint elaboration of collective preoccupations, dreams that are shared can contribute to the reciprocal healing of relation disorders and dysfunctional relational patterns. I will describe the four-step ‘dream cycle’, which changes the location of mental digestion. By putting transpersonal and interpersonal communication into action, the individual’s and the group’s mind develops (Köhncke and Mies, (2012)). In the final phase, preoccupying situations and conflictual emotions in dreams are elaborated by free discussion, ‘personal responses first’ which is ‘open communication’ in relational configurations in the ‘society of individuals’ (Elias,1939). This process, which I call ‘dreamtelling’, describes discourse (Schlapobersky, 1993) with potential partners who will ‘(re)dream the dream’, and offer further digestion of the collective preoccupation. A series of clinical vignettes discuss notions such as ‘the location of elaboration’ moves in the relations, e.g. ‘dreaming for others’ and ‘delegation’ as well as the notion of an ‘inner group’ and the unconscious communication between dreamers and listeners. In Part II, I provide deeper exploration of a clinical example in group-analytic group therapy, describing group work with a dream. The uniqueness of the group-analytic approach to the dream’s contents and its communicative aspect will be stressed. Requests for containment preoccupy relations and participants and should be differentiated during the discourse of ‘dreamtelling’.

This paper considers the idea of the "uncanny," in psychoanalysis from two different vantage points. First, I consider Freud’s monograph on the "uncanny," in which he explored the experience of the uncanny as representing an intrapsychic, one-person phenomenon, linking a familiar feeling to the presence or resonance of the unconscious as it is becoming manifest in an individual. Then I consider forms of "uncanniness" that constitute two unconsciouses at play in an interpersonal or intersubjective, two person field, reflecting the special evocative power manifest in and generated by unconscious to unconscious communication, representing forms of what Ferenczi considered to be a dialogue of unconsciouses. Examples of both kinds of "uncanniness" are considered, in and outside of the therapy experience.

This issue explores the roles that the uncanny and unconscious communication play in the psychoanalytic encounter.

This paper aims to describe the processes of construction and maintenance of analytic intimacy, understood as a shared state of relative internal freedom that is most permeable to preconscious and unconscious communications, which facilitate the processes of subjectivation, dreaming, and digestion of unprocessed trauma. The author illustrates the theoretical and technical features related to the concept of intimacy, highlighting the transformations of a clinical case followed in supervision. This article is presented in the form of a conversation with the supervisee, so as to evoke in the reader the dialogic and co-constructive experience of thought construction.

Outside of specific motor conditions, bodily movements are rarely considered in contemporary psychiatry. Stereotypies and mannerisms in clinical cases of catatonia are seen as having no deeper meaning in contemporary psychiatry. Perhaps we are missing something that could be important for us and our patients. The psychiatrist and analyst Carl Jung suggested there was an unconscious communication, and therefore a meaning in psychotic symptoms, including the movements in catatonia. The unconscious is rarely considered in psychotic presentations, yet psychosis is a prevalent condition in clinical settings. In this article Jung's ideas are presented along with case examples that invite the reader to consider them in their own future practice.

This paper explores how the process of learning to harness one's creativity in analytic listening can be analogous to the process of learning to do so in painting. It draws on clinical work with one client divided into two vignettes. The first describes the author's attempts to listen analytically by paying attention to form and content; narrative structure and use of language; and by paying attention to transference and countertransference communications. The second vignette explores what happened between therapist and client as the author had grown sufficiently confident to respond more intuitively to her client's communications. It describes how the process of becoming sufficiently familiar with theory was, paradoxically, what enabled her to respond to unconscious communications more loosely and creatively in the analytic encounter. It then explores what happened when she communicated this back to the client. The paper also describes how, as a result of the training and personal therapy, a parallel process of learning to let go and play was unfolding in the author's experience of painting. It concludes that learning to harness creativity in the therapeutic encounter can have an unexpected and welcome impact on the therapist's own artistic endeavours.

Unrepresented mental states lead to an impaired ability to feel emotions and trust in oneself, one's history and in the world. The article explores the question of how representations of oneself and the relevant other, the mother, become possible in the course of therapy when dissociative processes previously made this impossible, and what role unconscious communication plays in the analytic realm. This question will be explored by examining the theories of André Green, Philip Bromberg, and Howard Levine.

The digital age has normalized amateur sleuthing. Despite the fact that searching online for information about patients clashes with the analytic ideal, many of us google our patients. Dynamically speaking, what lies behind these searches? Certainly, the act of searching represents a premature foreclosure of imagination; it inevitably changes the relational matrix. It often conceals an unconscious communication that the analyst has not been able to acknowledge or examine. Internet searches can be individually or dyadically informed; in both instances, they disrupt the intimacy of the two-person relationship and our own self-experience as analysts. Even more troubling, they leave us holding secrets that breach an ethical line. This essay moves beyond the problem of boundary violations and explores how obtaining information about the other through online searches informs, enriches, and disrupts the co-created therapeutic experience.

When invited by Martin Scorsese to compose an original soundtrack for Shutter Island, Robbie Robertson, The Band’s guitarist and Scorsese’s long-time collaborator, proposed a selection of works by modern composers instead. Among those were Root of an Unfocus (1944) and Music for Marcel Duchamp (1947) by the avant-garde composer John Cage. The first is a prepared piano piece conceived at a pivotal moment in Cage’s career as he moved away from composing for percussion orchestra; the second accompanied the color animation sequence in Dreams that Money Can Buy by the Dadaist painter and filmmaker Hans Richter. Employing indeterminate methods to “circumvent any conscious or unconscious communication of his own subjectivity through his music,” Cage’s “aleatory” approach has subsequently been deployed by artists and filmmakers, its anarchic possibilities steadily infiltrating a range of filmic practices. Taking as my point of departure Cage’s largely unacknowledged influence on mainstream cinema, I explore the inventive potentials of his methods and consider them in light of Adorno’s aesthetic category of the “shudder”, a novel concept of spontaneity involving “involuntary and free receptivity before the unknown.” I conclude by focusing on cinema after Cage in three geographic regions: Asia, Europe, and North America.