What Are We Doing There? A Therapeutic Tale

Abstract

In this paper I try to portray our interpsychic work as reflective of an infinite conversation: an intersubjective dreaming of one’s life, moving between multiple positions/self-states, those of the patient and our own; becoming involved while pondering the movement we are part of, sometimes in our hearts and minds, many times aloud and openly with our patient; recognizing her experience and enabling her to see us, and sometimes not reflecting at all—“the “moving talk.” The dilemma of the therapist’s positioning, internally and interpersonally, is further postulated, especially in regard to the posttraumatic patient who suffered severe childhood abuse.

Notes

¹ In Hebrew there is an enchanting pun between suspension (Hashaya) and being-staying (Sheeya).

² “The therapeutic setting can be seen as being in a constant process of mutual construction … although not symmetrically … the very existence of negotiation regarding the setting, negotiation that is partly conscious and partly unconscious at any given moment, and not just its end product, has immense potential to broaden the therapeutic space” (Laor, 2007, p. 41).

³ Interpretive action is understood as the analyst’s use of action (other than verbally symbolic speech) to convey to the analysand specific aspects of the analyst’s understanding of the transference–countertransference that cannot at that juncture in the analysis be conveyed by the semantic content of words alone. An interpretation-in-action accrues its specific symbolic meaning from the experiential context of the analytic intersubjectivity in which it is generated. The understanding of the transference–countertransference conveyed by the analyst’s interpretive action must simultaneously be silently formulated in words by the analyst (Ogden, 1994, p. 219).

[Many times] the analyst’s silent verbal formulation of the interpretation-in -action evolved over time. There is a spontaneous, unplanned quality to the intervention, whose meanings the analyst began to recognize and consciously and silently verbalize only after (or perhaps as) the intervention was being posed. This type of interpretive action might be thought of as representing “the spontaneous gesture of the analytic third.” (Ogden, 1994, p. 242).

⁴ Reparation in action—using varied techniques such as imitation, affect enhancement, and amplification. In this sense, we often need to initiate an act, a gesture, that signifies in a near-concrete way the possibility of integration and reparation (Durban, 2015, p. 5).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Rina Lazar

Rina Lazar, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist in private practice in Tel-Aviv. She is a lecturer and supervisor at the Psychotherapy Program, Sackler School of Medicine, Tel-Aviv University. She is the editor of Talking about Evil (Routledge, in press).