Moving from Within The Maternal

Abstract

With Kristeva's concept of maternal eroticism (2014) as starting point, the "multiverse" of mother/child erotic sensibilities-the dance of the semiotic chora-is explored and a parallel engagement proposed within the analytic dyad. The dance of psychoanalysis is not the creative product of the patient's mind alone. Clinical work invites, requires, a choreographic engagement by the clinician in interplay with the patient. The clinician's analytic activity is thus akin to choreography: the structuring of a dance, or of a session, expresses an inner impulse brought into narrative form. The embodied art of dance parallels the clinician's creative vitality in contributing to the shaping of the movement of a session. Through formulation of an analytic eroticism, the terrain of what traditionally has been viewed as erotic transference and countertransference can be expanded to clinical benefit.

Thinking in a marrow Bone: Embodiment in Vajrayana Buddhism and Psychoanalysis

“…Miller describes a potential permeability in which "the analyst's bodily ego sometimes has access to the analysand's bodily ego" (p. xxi) and suggests that this potential requires the analyst to bear working at a "formally regressed level" (p. xvi). Elise (2017) takes another angle on the potential for intercorporeal communication, emphasizing the libidinal matrix that is needed to connect patient and analyst, particularly with patients whose symbolic representation is restricted: "our bodily selves engage," she writes; ". .…”

“…While some psychoanalytic thinking does consider the mind as embodied (Goldberg 2004, 2012; Elise 2017; Lombardi 2017; Markman 2020; Miller 2018; Milner 1969, 1987; Winnicott 1949) and as embedded in the world from earliest interactions (Goldberg 2004, 2012; Milner 1969; Winnicott 1949, 1953), many psychoanalysts have pointed out that the embodied mind has been difficult for psychoanalysis to take seriously (Lombardi 2017; Sella 2018; Sletvold 2014). Lombardi (2017) argues that the concrete material body is constantly in danger of being dissociated in psychoanalytic work.…”

“…To some extent, the body is enjoying renewed focus in psychoanalytic theorizing (Elise 2017; Goldberg 2004, 2012; Knoblauch 2000, 2005; Lombardi 2017; Markman 2020; Miller 2018; Orbach 2009; Sletvold 2014). Frequently this literature references infant research (Fonagy and Target 2009; Beebe et al 2005) and neuroscience (Damasio 1994, 1999; Schore 1994, 2011) to support the need for analytic work to attend to embodied experience.…”

“…There is a growing body of literature that emphasizes the analyst’s embodied receptivity/responsiveness as in itself a communication to the patient. Elise (2017), Miller (2018), and Markman (2020) each describe the potential for intercorporeal communication between patient and analyst. Markman says “the patient’s painfully disrupted and at times dissociated state is primarily and often forcefully conveyed through the language of the body”; he suggests that his “somatosensory reactions turn out to be a gauge of the patient’s disembodied experience” (p. 819).…”

On Becoming And Being A Subject Of Sexual Desire

“…I sought to contain but also sustain my libidinal energies. I wanted my erotic aliveness to remain accessible for me to analyze and for Chris to utilize via the libidinizing maternal erotic matrix theorized by Elise (2017, 2019) as analytic eroticism . Elise’s analytic eroticism is her clinical evocation of Kristeva’s maternal eroticism (2014), where Elise theorizes that the analyst enlivens and vitalizes the patient by allowing the analyst’s libidinal energy to be available for the patient to utilize.…”