Mimetic Understanding: The Embodied Dance of Words and Action

ABSTRACT

In this article we emphasize that Greek tragedy, surprisingly, can prove to be close to current psychoanalytic practice in exploring the paradoxical dimension of subjectivity. The interweaving of explicit/implicit communication and unconscious dimension in psychoanalytic work gives rise to emergent moments of meaning. Tragedy and psychoanalysis find their value in always striving for truth, at times grasping it, only to lose it and to have to co-construct it all over again. In the figure/background articulation of the spoken, the unspoken, and the unspeakable, it is important to consider words not as labels fixed to define qualities and phenomena, but as living processes that go through exciting twists and turns. The words of therapy are spoken words and are part of a communicative flow that takes place in the interweaving of multiple implicit and explicit channels involving all the senses: voice quality, rhythm, sound, gaze, emotionally activated body. We have been interested in rhythm in the clinical exchange and we have delved into the study of imitation as the primary vehicle of implicit relational knowing and the transmission of pragmatic knowledge embodying ways of being in the world at very deep and procedural levels. A short vignette and a clinical case illustrate how the tool of mimesis proves useful in activating and improving our clinical sensitivity.

KEYWORDS:

• Mimesis
• Greek tragedy
• embodiment
• multiplicity
• implicit/explicit clinical process

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Susanna Federici

Susanna Federici, Ph.D., is founding member, Faculty, supervising and training analyst of ISIPSÉ (Institute for Self Psychology and Relational Psychoanalysis, Italy); President of IARPP (International Association for Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy); and Past Member International Council of IAPSP (International Association Psychoanalytic Self Psychology).

Gianni Nebbiosi

Gianni Nebbiosi, Ph.D., is President, founding member, supervising and training analyst, of ISIPSÉ (Institute for Self Psychology and Relational Psychoanalysis, Italy); Founding and Board Member of IARPP (International Association for Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy); Member International Council of IAPSP (International Association for Psychoanalytic Self Psychology); Member Editorial Board of the journal Psychoanalytic Dialogues; and Member Editorial Board of the journal Psychoanalytic Inquiry.