Facilitating Recognition: Listening to You, Dreaming Together

Abstract

The paper proposes the value of a number of psychoanalytic concepts in the understanding of the intra‐psychic, interpersonal and transpersonal processes that are involved in recognition. It is argued that there is an urgent need for such understandings, given the current “disadvantage gap indices.” The importance of dreaming (as a manifestation of what Bion calls “alpha functioning”), in the form of collaborative partnerships which can facilitate recognition, is highlighted. The value of an adaptation of Fairbairn's Endopsychic Model as a means of understanding tensions that may develop in such partnerships is also considered, as is Bion's concept of the “container‐contained”. This latter concept is also proposed as a useful psychoanalytic lens through which to understand how a colonial invasion destroyed a vital container‐contained relationship for Aboriginal people and the traumatizing effect this had on individuals and communities. The paper concludes by suggesting how partnering initiatives, especially those which involve psychoanalytic understanding, might make a modest contribution to the aims of recognition and their over‐arching goal of uniting our nation and bringing all Australians together on an equal footing.