The Opening of the Field: Thoughts on the Poetics of Psychoanalytic Treatment

Abstract

This article compares poetic communication with psychoanalytic communication, especially in terms of the way subjective states are communicated and intersubjective conjunction is achieved. Four areas of poetics are discussed: metaphor, in which objects are charged with subjective meaning; image, which has the narrative quality of presenting acts of perception; sound and rhythm, which communicate affect; and form, which gives the psychoanalytic encounter a collaboratively achieved sense of shape and inevitability.

Metaphors transfer objects from the natural world into the field of the poem. They exist in transitional space between subject and object. In analysis, they exist in the intersubjective field between patient and therapist, and act as a conduit for understanding and connection. The twin tendencies of patients to retreat from metaphoric understanding into the concrete and of therapists to reify metaphors into absolute truths are seen as retreats from poetry and intersubjective relatedness.

Images, whether they are retrieved from memory, from dreams, or from daily perception, have an immediacy that directly connects the therapist to the patient's experience. They offer a direct point of entry to the patient's narrative.

The sound and rhythm of patient's speech convey their affect states in the same way they carry the feeling in a poem. Long vowels convey yearning, short vowels convey urgency, and hard consonants convey limits or inevitability. The dialog of sound and rhythm between therapist and patient is analogous to the attachment-enabling nonverbal dialog between infant and caregiver.