Listening to All of You with All of Me: The Arts, Empathy, and the Analyst

ABSTRACT

Contemporary psychoanalysis is a multisensory collaboration between patient and analyst that is deeply compatible with core social work values. It is a process requiring creative ways of listening and responding to facilitate new understanding and transformation. This report proposes that dedicated artistic pursuit serves to nurture and expand the empathic capacity of the clinical social worker. The author’s synchronous study of partnered dance and training in psychoanalysis offers an example of the arts as a model and parallel process of healing as well as a source of restorative and generative functions.

KEYWORDS:

• Arts
• dance
• empathy
• listening
• psychoanalysis
• self-psychology

Notes

¹ For example, see Mancia (2003) for a discussion of the psychotherapeutic use of implicit and explicit memory systems.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ashley Warner

Ashley Warner, LCSW, BCD-P, is affiliated with the New York Institute for Psychoanalytic Self-Psychology, and is on faculty at the Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Study Center. She is in private practice in Manhattan.