Grappling Toward Emotional Engagement: Discussion of Andrew Eig’s “Self-Defeating Aggression and the Need for Rough-and-Tumble Play in an Adult Psychoanalysis”

Abstract

Andrew Eig’s “Self-Defeating Aggression and the Need for Rough-and-Tumble Play in an Adult Psychoanalysis” brings to life therapeutic action in the noninterpretive, playful register. In this discussion, I highlight Eig’s creative use of self in dialogue, which serves to downregulate his patient’s protective defensives and overwhelming affect states, while also acknowledging the potential dangers in playful engagement, particularly around race, class, gender, and histories of disenfranchisement. In a spontaneous, embodied moment, Eig engages in movement before a session and accesses a reverie from his wrestling days, creatively discovering an imaginative and empathic link to his patient and their mutual desire for emotional contact. In doing so, he models a sensibility that invites the reader to consider their own personal idioms in adult treatment.

Keywords:

• Aggression
• embodiment
• improvisation
• miming
• play
• reverie

Disclosure Statement

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

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Heather Ferguson

Heather Ferguson, LCSW is faculty and supervisor at the Institute for the Psychoanalytic Study of Subjectivity and the National Institute for the Psychotherapies, in New York. She is Co-Book Review Editor for Psychoanalysis, Self and Context, and has chapters in Ghosts in the Consulting Room: Echoes of Trauma in Psychoanalysis (Eds. Harris, Kalb, and Klebanoff) and Art, Creativity, and Psychoanalysis: Perspectives from Analyst-Artists, (Ed. Hagman). She maintains a private practice in New York City.