Binocular vision in the total situation

Abstract

This paper investigates the concept of “total situation,” which, even though introduced into psychoanalytic thinking via sister disciplines, has gradually acquired a relatively prominent position in therapeutic practice. It is used as a metaphor for the envelopment of the unfolding transferential and otherwise events in the analytic process. Irrespective of whether one focuses on the individual analytic condition or the group analytic one, contemporary psychoanalytic perspectives include both bipersonal unconscious interactions as well as the various levels of the total situation in their conceptualizations of the nature of the process. Such a complex approach can only be achieved through the so-called binocular vision of the analyst.

Key words:

• binocular vision
• total situation
• transference
• group analysis
• interpretation

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Chris Joannidis

Chris Joannidis is a psychiatrist and a psychoanalyst, and a full member of the British and Hellenic Psychoanalytical Societies, the Tavistock Society of Psychotherapists, and the Group Analytic Society (International). He has worked for many years as honorary senior lecturer at the University Psychiatric Clinic of Athens University and for about ten years as a consultant psychiatrist in psychotherapy at St Albans, Hertfordshire, UK. He is currently in full-time private practice in Athens, while being heavily involved in the training program provided by the Hellenic Psychoanalytical Society, and the Istanbul Association for Group Analysis, as training and supervising analyst.