The unknown and the horrific in the appearance of evil: On the borderline of presence and absence in transference and countertransference relationships

Abstract

Psychotherapists currently find themselves considering the extent to which sociopolitical and economic issues in a globalized world can affect the evolutionary nature of the psychic organizations sustaining the individual. It seems we are mostly witnessing a weakening of the psychic structures that contain and maintain a sufficient and constant level of integration and unity of sense within the individual–world relationship. Patients frequently come into analysis with invalidating states of anxiety, panic attacks, and the explosion of sudden psychotic crises, accompanied by experiences of depersonalization and derealization. What I would like to examine in depth relates to the influence of the trans-subjective in us as psychotherapists, committed to dealing with psychic disorders that involve us as persons emotionally and intellectually present in our times, with a sense of awareness and responsibility. The quality of the treatment depends, among other things, on the effective elaboration of fullness and emptiness that one generates in the resonance emerging from the process of transference and countertransference. The word, the presence, and the absence, physically and mentally, of the psychoanalyst and the patient are recognized as those activators of potential transformation which are an appropriate form of medicine at an analyst’s disposal during the process of changing a pathogenic state.

Key words:

• psychosocial context
• presubjective
• intersubjective
• trans-subjective
• extended psyche
• relational resonance
• fear
• anxiety
• social media
• Facebook

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Carla Weber

Author

Carla Weber, PhD, is a psychologist, psychoanalyst and psychosocial analyst. She runs the Studio Akoé of Trento, Italy. She is a member (and previous chairperson) of the Board of Directors and of the Scientific Committee of the Associazione di Studi Psicoanalitici (ASP), in Milan, as well as an IFPS delegate.