The predictive moment: reverie, connection and predictive processing

ABSTRACT

According to the theory of predictive processing, understanding in the present involves non-consciously representing the immediate future, based on probabilistic inference shaped by learning from the past. This paper suggests links between this neuroscientific theory and the psychoanalytic concept of reverie – an empathic, containing attentional state – and considers implications for the ways therapists intuit implicit material in their clients. Using findings from a study about therapists’ experiences of this state, we propose that reverie can offer practitioners from diverse theoretical backgrounds a means to enter the predictive moment deeply, making use of its subtle contents to connect with clients.

KEYWORDS:

• Reverie
• empathy
• intuition
• predictive processing
• mental imagery

Acknowledgements

We wish to thank participants in the study for generously sharing their experiences with us, and the reviewers of this paper for their extremely helpful and insightful inputs. We are deeply grateful to them all.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes on contributors

Lynn McVey works as a BACP-registered therapist in private practice and a researcher at the School of Healthcare, University of Leeds, UK. She is interested in reverie, empathy and the micro-phenomenal nature of client-therapist/participant-researcher interactions. Lynn undertook the qualitative research in this paper as part of a PhD in psychotherapy and counselling at the University of Leeds.

Greg Nolan is Visiting Lecturer in Counselling and Psychotherapy at the School of Healthcare, University of Leeds, UK. He is also an MBACP Senior Registered Practitioner and Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. He has a teaching career spanning 45 years and has worked for 30 years as a therapist, manager of counselling services and counselling training programmes, freelance counsellor, clinical supervisor and trainer. His research interests are in phenomena in micro-moments of practice and clinical supervision.

John Lees is Associate Professor of Psychotherapy and Counselling at the School of Healthcare, University of Leeds, UK. He is a UKCP-registered psychotherapist and BACP-accredited senior practitioner, and was the founder editor of a Routledge journal Psychodynamic Practice. His research interests include the links between therapy and complementary and alternative medicine and approaches to practitioner research based on investigating the microphenomena of practice. He works in private practice.

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 We found only one example of research that explored the clinical reveries of a sample of therapists from different theoretical backgrounds: Bowen (2012).

2 Participants’ and clients’ anonymity are protected in this paper by omitting or disguising potentially identifiable data and by referring to them using pseudonyms.