Words, Images, Dreams and Metaphors: The Analyst’s Embodied Imagination in the Service of Therapeutic Engagement

Abstract

In this article, I provide clinical vignettes to illustrate the use of the analyst’s visual imagery, bodily sensations, unconscious reverie, altered experience of the patient, and dreams. All of these nonverbal aspects of the analyst’s experience can serve to deepen the analytic relationship and enhance the therapy.

Keywords:

• bodily sensations
• dreams
• nonverbal
• reverie
• unconscious
• visual imagery

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Elizabeth Seward

Elizabeth Anne Seward, M.S., M.D. practiced as a physician in Internal Medicine for 13 years, until she retrained as a psychoanalyst at The National Institute for the Psychotherapies, National Training Program in New York City, graduating in 2002. She has been in private practice in psychoanalysis and analytic psychotherapy in Burlington, Vermont since. She is a founding member and faculty at the Vermont Institute for Psychotherapies. She has presented papers at NIP, Division 39, IARPP, and IAPSP since 2002.