Autotheory: Toward the Embodying of Analytic Framing

Abstract

Autotheory is an emerging idea in feminist theory that emphasizes the inevitability of the subjective and embodied personal within any development, understanding, or application of theory. Autotheory offers a way to bring the sexed and gendered body of the analyst back into view in clinical practice and is a possible route to relibidinizing psychoanalytic theory. The embodied part of the “personal” contribution of the analyst will be examined through conceptions of framing and the frame, extending and further conceptualizing ideas prominently addressed within relational and intersubjective theories. Framing activity as a developmental goal for psychoanalytic process is considered in relation to the ways in which autotheoretical texts enact or depict the unceasing interplay of relational experience and theory that forms subjectivity. A clinical vignette describes the experience of framing activity during remote videoconference therapy.