Monsters, dreams and madness: Commentary on ‘The arms of the chimeras’

Abstract

Considering Freudian and Post‐Freudian approaches to the intersubjective Beatrice Ithier puts the work of Michel de M'Uzan and Thomas Ogden in comparison. To this comparison I add a consideration of the work of Christopher Bollas. The highly creative clinical approaches these three theorists take is shown to be informed by their elaborations of the Freudian notion of unconscious communication and by new approaches to the issue of identity. Attention is paid to differentiating traumatic from fanciful chimeras; and to the experience of the analyst undergoing the sorts of transformations requisite to entering this psychic space marked by fluid exchanges of being and becoming, wherein analyst becomes patient, new subjects are created through shared dreams, and through which monsters appear.

Notes

1. De M'Uzan (1999) differentiates his ideas regarding a transitional area from those of Winnicott by emphasizing in his notion the importance of the displacements of narcissistic cathexis of representations rather than external reality.

2. A good example of this balance can be found in Katz (2014).