To Dream, Perchance to Think: Discussion of Papers by Noelle Burton and Christopher Bonovitz

Abstract

This is a discussion of papers by Noelle Burton and Christopher Bonovitz, which explores clinical work with patients who are either developmentally incapable of articulating symbolic thought or immersed in a transference–countertransference position in which abstract thinking is foreclosed.

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Notes on contributors

Jody Messler Davies

Jody Messler Davies, Ph.D., is Editor in Chief Emeritus and current associate editor of Psychoanalytic Dialogues: A Journal of Relational Perspectives; Faculty, Supervisor, and former co-chair of the Relational Track, New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis; Founding Vice President of the International Association for Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy; and Founding Member of the Stephen A. Mitchell Center for Relational Psychoanalysis. She is on the editorial boards of Gender and Sexuality and Psychoanalytic Perspectives, and is a Faculty and Supervisor at the National Institute for the Psychotherapies, The Massachusetts Institute for Psychoanalysis, and The Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis, Los Angeles. Dr. Davies is coauthor (with Mary Gail Frawley-O’Dea) of Treating the Adult Survivor of Childhood Sexual Abuse: A Psychoanalytic Perspective. She is currently at work on a new book: Transformations of Desire and Despair: Clinical Implications of the Theoretical Shift to a Relational Perspective. Dr. Davies has written on the topics of trauma, dissociation, multiplicity of self organization, and termination, as well as a series of papers on sexual and erotic aspects of transference/countertransference process.