Dramatic Dialogue

Atlas, Galit; Aron, Lewis

doi:10.4324/9781315150086

Cited by 28 publications

(6 citation statements)

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“…I have also sometimes been destabilised by my initial mistake, wanting to engage in repair too soon, scaring the patient off even further. Although I recognise the inevitability of these enactments (Atlas & Aron, 2018), my stomach drops when they occur, and I am left ruefully looking at empty space where the 'octopus' that we had been sighting and beginning to engage with had once been. In the same way that Craig hunkers down, focusing his energy on engaging with the discipline of continuing to 'show up' in the ocean every day, keeping his wits alive to clues that will allow him to find the octopus again, so too as a therapist, one must commit to the discipline of the work, resting in a kind of hope and faith that the process of therapy with all of its routines and boundaries will, in time, bring a renewal of contact.…”

Section: The Fine-tuning Of Faithmentioning

confidence: 99%

Learning From ‘My Octopus Teacher’

Simmonds

2024

Brit J Psychotherapy

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In this paper, I present the idea that the documentary film My Octopus Teacher (Ehrlich & Reed) is an evocative allegory for some key threads in the ongoing learning at the heart of psychotherapy. On the one hand, the film is a narrative about a relationship formed between the narrator and documentary‐maker Craig and an octopus that he encounters in daily dives in an underwater kelp forest. On the other hand, it is a story–dream of a man and an octopus who swim together in the proto‐mental seas of the unconscious, a space where fluidity and symmetry rule, and where the boundaries between I and thou dissolve. Alongside the theme of mutual dream work, the documentary presents an evocative allegory of what it takes to practice as a therapist: the maps of our own disintegration that inform our work, and the key dispositions of learning to watch and observe and to fine tune our faith.

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Section: The Fine-tuning Of Faithmentioning

confidence: 99%

Learning From ‘My Octopus Teacher’

Simmonds

2024

Brit J Psychotherapy

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“…Reverie for me applies both to the willingness to respond to the emotional experience of the work and also my association to the theoretical terrain and the social and cultural context. I work in London as a Jungian analyst who has explored psychoanalytic ideas and practice in some depth and increasingly benefitted from the relational approaches described by North American analysts' work (Benjamin, 2004;Atlas & Aron, 2018). Study groups on The Red Book and The Black Books have also been profound influences in recent years.…”

Section: Case Response I: Geraldine Godsilmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The second phase raised many important questions for me about what recent American relational analysts have called dramatic dialogues (Atlas & Aron, 2018). The philosopher Judith Butler's ideas on performativity (1997, p. 158) also seem relevant to Chloe's use of Kate as avatar in this phase of her work.…”

Section: The Prospective Function In Dreams and In The Relational Matrixmentioning

confidence: 99%

From the Clinical Commentaries Editors

2023

J Analytical Psychology

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Whatever must have raced through Demeter's mind? How does one liberate a young girl's sense of her sexual self when it has been abducted by the appetite of others, by the girl's very search for belonging? Entrapment and liberation entangled.I was a 14-year-old girl reading Lolita. There wasn't a whole lot separating me from Dolores Hayes. She was from New England, same as me. She liked to gorge on sweets and movie magazines. And I liked to watch MTV while drinking can after can of diet soda. The logic was easy to follow. If Humbert could see something extraordinary in Dolores maybe a man could see something in me. More than anything I wanted to be seen, paid attention to, picked out of a crowd…. I wanted to be worshipped from a distance for simply existing.

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“…The second phase raised many important questions for me about what recent American relational analysts have called dramatic dialogues (Atlas & Aron, 2018). The philosopher Judith Butler’s ideas on performativity (1997, p. 158) also seem relevant to Chloe’s use of Kate as avatar in this phase of her work.…”

Section: The Prospective Function In Dreams and In The Relational Matrixmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Reverie for me applies both to the willingness to respond to the emotional experience of the work and also my association to the theoretical terrain and the social and cultural context. I work in London as a Jungian analyst who has explored psychoanalytic ideas and practice in some depth and increasingly benefitted from the relational approaches described by North American analysts’ work (Benjamin, 2004; Atlas & Aron, 2018). Study groups on The Red Book and The Black Books have also been profound influences in recent years.…”

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confidence: 99%

Case Response I: Geraldine Godsil

Godsil

2023

J Analytical Psychology

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the Azores, it was nice but he swears at me, calling me names while we have sex. I'm tired of prostituting myself."With therapy and SLAA meetings, Chloe begins to learn a new language and perspective on what it means to move toward a sense of wholeness, i.e., "my sense of self-worth is greater than what someone could pay me to make me something that I am not."Over the course of a year, Chloe vacillates in self-doubt and grief as we explore, "I'm no-one without Kate"; "life is rather boring and ordinary" and "I'm so lonely." We continue to talk about self-respect, dead-end relationships, her shame, and how her mother used her and did not protect her from abuse. Chloe begins to value empathy as a relational practice and is more aware of the vicious cycles of her pursuit for arousal that lead to numbing out activities. She begins to own her truth and is more selfaccepting. Chloe continued in therapy with me for another year while establishing her recovery and further integrating her trauma.This was not a tidy case. I was often overwhelmed and sought consultation to help me hold the raw Dionysian archetypal energies at play. I had a child the same age as Chloe at the time of treatment, which enhanced my countertransference feelings. Although my treatment with Chloe was over 15 years ago, while writing this case, I had a countertransference dream reactivating my distress to help liberate Chloe from the destructive parts of herself. In the dream:

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Dramatic Dialogue

Cited by 28 publications

References 0 publications

Learning From ‘My Octopus Teacher’

Learning From ‘My Octopus Teacher’

From the Clinical Commentaries Editors

Case Response I: Geraldine Godsil

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