Self and Talent—Treatment Considerations

Abstract

The clinical pursuit of patients' experiences of talent, in their current life and in their developmental years, has broadened the clinical field considerably and provided more lanes and latitude in the “royal road to the unconscious.” Interest in patients' talents has been experienced as an invitation to bring in their created works, not just as a display of aesthetic interest but, much more importantly, as another pathway through which the analyst can access an understanding of the deepest and most meaningful levels of selfexperience. This article explores some of the meanings of talent for the self and suggests that there is a developmental line for the maturation of one's relationship to one's talent. I provide discussion that illustrates the coextensiveness of the inner experience of talent with the selfobject surround throughout growth and maturation. Finally, I provide illustrations of how talent can be experienced and how exploration of experiences of talent can play a quintessential role in psychoanalytic treatment.