Dancing With the Unconscious: The Art of Psychoanalysis

Abstract

This article examines psychoanalytic work as an art and uses the metaphor of dance between two unconscious minds to describe the rich creativity of mental life. Free association, transference/countertransference, and dreamwork are each discussed for their creative dimensions and their coupling in the cure. A compelling session with dream analysis of a transsexual patient is presented verbatim (along with the author's inner thoughts) to illustrate the art of dance that takes place between analyst and analysand.

Notes

Danielle Knafo, Ph.D., is a Professor in the Clinical Psychology Doctoral Program at Long Island University's C.W. Post Campus and Associate Professor and Supervisor at NYU's Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis. Dr. Knafo's books include Egon Schiele: A Self in Creation and In Her Own Image: Women's Self-Representation in Twentieth-Century Art. She maintains a private practice in Manhattan and in Great Neck, New York.

¹This idea can be applied to science, as well. Science is also messy, and, in fact, the inspirations that move it forward are filled with beautiful and daring leaps of intuition. What people ordinarily think of as science—the formulas, the theories, and the technologies that emerge from them—leaves much out. A fuller notion of science must include its history and suffering, the struggle of human individuals to creatively describe and formulate physical reality. Then the art inherent in science reveals itself.