Residues in the analyst of the patient's symbiotic connection at a somatic level: unrepresented states in the patient and analyst

Abstract

This paper discusses the residues of a somatic countertransference that revealed its meaning several years after apparently successful analytic work had ended. Psychoanalytic and Jungian analytic ideas on primitive communication, dissociation and enactment are explored in the working through of a shared respiratory symptom between patient and analyst. Growth in the analyst was necessary so that the patient's communication at a somatic level could be understood. Bleger's concept that both the patient's and analyst's body are part of the setting was central in the working through.

Collective Trauma, Implicit Memories, the Body, and Active Imagination in Jungian Analysis1

“…However, despite the above‐mentioned theoretical developments and the growing importance that current research in trauma is giving to various forms of corporeal work (yoga, EMDR, focusing, among others), a certain division between somatic approaches and the analytical process seems to persist in clinical practice, as if including the body should be undertaken separately from the consulting room. In the Jungian—and psychoanalytic—literature, there is increasing recognition of the analyst's need to include a careful listening to his/her primitive and affective responses at the somatic level (Eulert‐Fuchs, 2020; Fogarty, 2018; Godsil, 2018; Kalsched, 2020; Lagutina, 2021; Martini, 2016; Merchant, 2015, 2016; Schellinski, 2009: Sidoli, 2000; Wilkinson, 2017; West, 2016; Zoppi, 2017, among others).…”

“…Several decades ago, Joan Chodorow (1991, 1999a, 1999b, 2005) introduced a somatic approach based on Active Imagination in Jungian clinical work, which continued to be developed by new generations of analysts, not only in the United States, but also in Europe and Latin American countries. Nevertheless, in the practice—and in Godsil’s words—there seems to be a lack of adequate awareness of “a shared common approach to meeting the most primitive and fusional needs of our patients” (Godsil, 2018, p. 13). It may perhaps be pertinent here to ask ourselves about the persistence of this Cartesian inheritance, both in our clinical practice and in our formative spaces.…”

Difference – is it hated or desired? Reflections on the totalitarian state of mind

“…His understanding and usage of participation mystique is close to what Bleger describes as pre‐paranoid‐schizoid communicative states, where the boundaries between subject and object are unstable and where the growth of an individual begins. This theme is further explored in a recent paper by Geraldine Godsil (), where she talks about the residues of the patient’s symbiotic connection with the analyst at a symbolic level.…”

Case Response II

“…So overwhelming and sensorially painful can the “presentation” of such patients be, that it can be easy for any analyst to “miss” the “behind the scenes” shame‐filled, psychotic and unformulated beta elements searching for alpha function that can symbiotically find their way into similarly unformulated areas of unrepresented pain in the analyst and become “lodged” in the body. In this regard I was also reminded of a paper by Geraldine Godsil (2018), “Residues in the Analyst of the Patient's Symbiotic Connection at a Somatic Level: Unrepresented States in the Patient and Analyst.” Godsil movingly reflects on her own experience of a shared somatic symptom between herself and her patient, which only much later in her professional life was she able to make sense of as she became more able to recognize and work through an area of previously unrepresented loss and acknowledge her manic defence against its recognition.…”