Discussion of “Words and music: Creating transformative opportunities through implicit and explicit dialogue”

ABSTRACT

In this discussion I use the interaction between Dr. Davis (referred to as Scott) and his analysis and, Sue, to examine an implicit ideal that we all might hold, that is favoring the need to re-present experience in words as a way of helping patients. Often a worded response (as opposed to an embodied registration, a facial expression or verbal pause or accent, for example), can feel to those we work with as robbing them of the power of their efforts in treatment that we are witnessing and trying to recognize. The worded response can feel like a usurpation of agency serving the narcissistic needs of the analyst over those of the patient. Bollas has called this an “extractive introjection.” I explore moments in the clinical interaction where this might have occurred at the same time that Scott adroitly uses his and his patient’s embodied emotional registrations effectively.

KEYWORDS:

• Embodiment
• enactment
• extractive introjection
• idealization
• narcissism

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Steven H. Knoblauch

Steven H. Knoblauch, Ph.D. is Clinical Adjunct Associate Professor at the New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis where he is also a Clinical Consultant. He is author of The Musical Edge of Therapeutic Dialogue (2000), Bodies and Social Rhythms: Navigating Unconscious Vulnerability and Emotional Fluidity (2021) and coauthor with Beebe, Rustin and Sorter of Forms of Intersubjectivity in Infant Research and Adult Treatment (2005).