Raw reveries, polaroid reveries: Some hypotheses about possible functions and technical uses of reveries in the session*

ABSTRACT

The author tries to show how the epiphany of a reverie during a session can become a source of unexpected intuitions about the essence and possible figurability of the emotional experience which is flowing in the here-and-now of the analytic life. Reverie becomes an important analytic source above all when an analyst is in contact with primordial states of the mind, characterized by turbulences of unrepresentable feelings and sensations. In this paper the author outlines a hypothetical kit of functions, technical uses and analytic effects of a reverie in an analytic process, working through the idea of analysis as the transformation in dreaming of the nightmares and terrors which beset and trouble the patient’s mind. In particular the author describes: (a) the use of reverie as a criterion of analysability in first consultation meetings; (b) the specificity of two different types of reverie, which the author names reveries polaroid and raw reveries; and (c) the possible disclosure of a reverie in case of a specific kind of reverie that the author calls polaroid reverie. Sketches of analytic life become living portraits of the hypothesis proposed by the author about these different possible uses of a reverie in analytic work, as a probe and resource for beginning and developing a course of analysis that engages with archaic and presymbolic areas of psychic functioning.

Reverie grezze, Reverie Polaroid: alcune ipotesi su possibili funzioni e utilizzo tecnico della rêverie in seduta. Abstract (Italiano)

L’apparire di una rêverie in seduta può diventare sorgente di inaspettate intuizioni sull’essenza e possibile figurabilità dell’esperienza emotiva che sta circolando nell’hic et nunc della vita analitica, soprattutto quando un analista è a contatto con stati primitivi della mente, caratterizzati da turbolenze di vissuti irrappresentabili.

In quest’articolo l’autrice cerca di delineare un kit di possibili funzioni, utilizzi tecnici ed effetti analitici della rêverie nel processo analitico, transitando attraverso l’idea dell’analisi come trasformazione in sogno degli incubi e terrori che assediano la mente del paziente. In particolare viene descritto: (a) l’utilizzo di una rêverie come criterio di analizzabilità in primi colloqui di consultazione; (b) la specificità di quelle che l’autrice individua come due differenti tipi di rêverie: Rêverie Polaroid e Rêverie Grezze; (c) la possibile disclosure di una rêverie, nel caso si tratti di un tipo particolare di rêverie che l’autrice definisce Rêverie Polaroid.

Frammenti di vita analitica vengono proposti come illustrazioni in vivo di questi possibili utilizzi tecnici di una rêverie, come sonda e risorsa per possibili inizi e sviluppi di un lavoro analitico alle prese con aree di funzionamento psichico arcaiche e presimboliche.

KEYWORDS:

• Reverie
• transformation in dreaming
• unrepresantable state of mind

Notes

1 I am referring to that oneiric state of mind which from 1967 Bion begins to consider as a necessary analytic disposition for intercepting and intuiting the emotional truth of what happens in the session (Ogden 2015). A state of mind which in Attention and Interpretation (1970) starts to become characterized by absence of memory and desire, unison, negative capability, faith, intuition, and reverie.

2 In this analytic moment I am analytically using what Ogden (2017) describes as “speaking from reverie”, which I will address in the following sections when I discuss the technical use of reveries that take a raw form.

3 Anya was just 18 at the time of our first meeting. Since she was legally an adult I decided on the telephone to tell her mother that it would perhaps be more helpful if I could meet Anya straight away, without a preliminary conversation with her and her husband.

4 Janet Frame (1924–2004) was a writer from New Zealand, several times nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature. The story of her life and mental illness is told in the film An Angel at my Table (1990), directed by Jane Campion.

5 In the events recounted in the Thousand and One Nights, the Persian king Shahryar, having been betrayed by his wife, systematically kills his brides at the end of the first night of marriage. One day Scheherazade, eldest daughter of the Grand Vizier, decides to offer herself voluntarily as the sovereign’s bride, being strongly convinced that she has intuited a way to placate the wrath of the man against the female sex. Every evening she tells the King a story, deferring the ending until the next day. This goes on for “a thousand and one nights”; and in the end the King falls in love with her and spares her life.

6 The concepts of the analytic field proposed by Bion field theory and the third subject of analysis described by Ogden look rather like “twins” which refer to the same area, dimension, nature and method of analytic work, sharing both the intersubjective vertex and the oneiric model of the mind and of analytic treatment that we find in Bion.