Discovering the Living World: Discussion of “Life on Her Own Terms: A Story of Reclamation”

Abstract

Lisa Beritzhoff’s paper is considered in the light of contemporary developments in clinical theory. Her active approach to helping her patient reclaim the world of live objects offers a striking illustration of the vitalizing or “inductive” dimension of the analyst’s presence. This aspect of analytic activity, which entails engagement at the level of shared psycho-sensory experience, lies at the very heart of the therapeutics of psychoanalysis, even if it has remained largely in the background of clinical theory. More than maintaining an interpretive and receptive posture, it entails the development of a proprioceptive readiness in the analyst; it is marked by the activity of sensing things together as the essential underpinning and prelude to emotional engagement and play and co-creation of symbolic meanings. The paper shows vividly how, especially in treating cases of traumatic early loss and deprivation, this active dimension of the analyst’s embodied presence becomes the explicit center of the analyst’s technique; but this inductive activity is also a vital factor in all effective analytic work, keeping the clinical field alive to the world of objects.

Notes

¹ Why so many people in our practices seem to bear the psychical scars of crippling early loss is a question worth pondering, but we cannot do that here today.

² In this sense, the analytic “frame” is always being re-created and revitalized, if it to remain viable and useful to the analytic process (Goldberg, 2017).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Peter Goldberg

Peter Goldberg, Ph.D., is a Personal and Supervising Analyst at the Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California, is Chair of Faculty at the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis, and on the faculty of the Wright Institute in Berkeley.