Activating Lifeness in the Analytic Encounter: The Ground of Being in Psychoanalysis

Abstract

My aim in this paper is to close in on the register of what James Wood calls “lifeness” in his writing about fiction. I maintain that such “lifeness” establishes the ground of being in psychoanalysis, which is itself the ground of vitalizing and critical contact-making. I will maintain that this focus represents a paradigm shift in psychoanalysis from an explanatory, causal to a more emergent and phenomenological perspective in which we enter into the field of the relationship, including all of its’ non-symbolic-embodied, pre-symbolic-descriptive and symbolic-representational dimensions. Only from this ground can we approach our patients’ more treacherous death haunts. I will offer clinical material from one analysis to illustrate what I mean.

This article is referred to by:

Restarting the Imagination, Refinding the World: A Discussion of “Activating Lifeness in the Analytic Encounter” and “‘What If’ Dimensions of the Analytic Field”

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Rachael Peltz

Rachael Peltz, Ph.D., is a Training and Supervising Analyst, Faculty Member and Co-Director of the Community Psychoanalysis Track at the Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California; and a Supervising Analyst at the Massachusetts Institute of Psychoanalysis. She is an Associate Editor of Psychoanalytic Dialogues, and has a private practice in Berkeley, California.