Presence, Mourning, and Beauty: Elements of Analytic Process

Abstract

Analyst and patient occasionally arrive at moments of heightened meaning and aliveness. These moments can be transformative and lead to psychic change in the patient. They give life and arouse hope, and feel "real" in a new way, though often entailing emotional turbulence. Specific internal work must be done by the analyst to allow for and foster these experiences. This involves a kind of mourning process in the analyst that allows for "presence" and "availability" as described by Gabriel Marcel, and for the "at-one-ment" described by Bion. These transforming moments can be viewed in an aesthetic realm, along the lines of Keats's "Beauty is truth, truth beauty." This embodies the analytic value of emotional truth. These moments are shared and their emergence is an intersubjective creation. Clinical illustrations show how the internal work of mourning by the analyst through directed introspection allows for presence and availability, and then for shared moments of beauty with the patient.

Limits on Love: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Psychoanalytic Texts

“…In her essay "Eye to Eye," Audre Lorde (1984) contrasts the unencumbered situation of white people, who "by and large have more time and space to afford the luxury of scrutinizing their emotions" with the preoccupations of Black people, who "have always had to attend closely to the hard and continuous work of survival" (p. 172). Within a psychotherapeutic context, Black therapists are tasked with scrutinizing the emotions of others while attending closely to the work of survival.…”

“…It is all disruptive labor rooted in survival, the kind that allows me to engage with and speak to this discourse. "And survival," notes Audre Lorde (1984), "is the greatest gift of love" (p. 150).…”

“…The therapist and scholar Venus Evans-Winters (2019) writes that in pursuit of this recognition and "self-determination," "Black women have relied on creative and alternative ways of constructing and legitimating knowledge claims that serve to portray our shared socio-political cultural experiences" (p. 22). For example, the feminist thinker and author Audre Lorde (1984) describes poetry as "illumination," the process through which "we give name to those ideas which are-until the poem-nameless and formless, about to be birthed, but already felt" (p. 36). Black feminism-in movement, in spirit-is poetry: expanding and extending existing movements-the Black liberation movement, the white feminist movement, the anticapitalist theories of Marx-all the while making heard what has been silenced and making seen what has been overlooked.…”

Embodied Attunement and Participation

“…As I searched for a “language” that evokes and gives shape to this nonverbal dimension, I found that music, particularly jazz, suits this purpose (Markman 2006, 2011, 2017, in press). The metaphor of music helped me conceptualize what I was doing intuitively.…”

“…The patient’s embodied state and the pulse of the relationship direct my actions. The patient senses my embodied receptivity in my presence and availability (Markman 2017). what Wilson (2020) describes in his analogy of the analyst as innkeeper—the analyst’s “hospitality,” embodied through tone, gesture, and cadence.…”