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On receiving what has gone astray, on finding what has got lost
Author(s) -
Cavalli Alessandra
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
journal of analytical psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.285
H-Index - 23
eISSN - 1468-5922
pISSN - 0021-8774
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-5922.2010.01887.x
Subject(s) - psychic , attunement , projective identification , unconscious mind , psychology , psychoanalysis , ogden , identity (music) , countertransference , social psychology , psychotherapist , cognitive psychology , psychoanalytic theory , aesthetics , philosophy , medicine , physics , alternative medicine , pathology , thermodynamics
: Disturbing emotions that act as bodily cryptograms waiting to be deciphered are currently understood as intra‐psychic trauma. The author briefly discusses Fordham’s concepts of deintegration and primitive identity, as well as early patterns of mother‐infant attunement to describe how the empathic capacity of the analyst is dramatically challenged in helping patients to give birth to unbearable emotions that remain an undifferentiated entity. Referring to Ogden's understanding of the mechanism of projective identification, the author will explore how unconscious mental processes in the analyst and the patient can work at re‐activating failures in the deintegrative process. Clinical material is presented to show how unconscious psychic events that affect the patient but cannot be known consciously can be born into mind by the analytic couple.