I read psychoanalysis as poetry, so I don’t have to worry about whether it is true or even useful, but only whether it is haunting or moving or intriguing or amusing—whether it is something I can’t help but be interested in.~Adam Phillips

[ArtleyWilkins]

Really dark, existentialist poetry . . .

[Salmon77]

As a client I certainly care whether the theory behind my therapy is true or useful.

[Ididitmyway]

I like this comparison with poetry. After all both poetry and psychoanalysis attempt to understand deep and dark places of human soul, but do it in different ways. So, I guess, one can look at both as two different languages and, as such, each one can be translated into the other.

Originally Posted by Salmon77

As a client I certainly care whether the theory behind my therapy is true or useful.

I don't think you've read it right.
His not saying he doesn't care. Just that his open to it being more.

[Merope]

I recently went to a couple of lectures on psychoanalysis in literature. The guy giving the lecture was a practising psychoanalyst and also a professor of literature. I don't remember his exact words, but he mentioned something about readers subconsciously projecting their own fantasies onto a given text, making reading subjective.

I really like the Adam Phillips quote...I personally tend to find "useful" anything that is moving, or meaningful or laden with something that intrigues me. I also think that the terms "useful" and "true" are subjective and malleable based on our inner thoughts and feelings. The human mind is like poetry...we often tend to dig deeply for meaning and in that sense, psychoanalysis can't be an exact science. You can't try to make sense of something fluid and oblique using sharp and rigid tools.

[SalingerEsme]

Originally Posted by Jessica11

I read psychoanalysis as poetry, so I don’t have to worry about whether it is true or even useful, but only whether it is haunting or moving or intriguing or amusing—whether it is something I can’t help but be interested in.~Adam Phillips

I love this quotation, and Adam Phillips. I read Steven Stern- Relational Psychoanalysis last week. In it, he discussed Bion saying the analyst should attend each session free of both memory and desire. All I could think of is T.S. Eliot "mixing memory and desire" while winter keeps us warm and hibernating from the feeling stirred by spring. Steven Stern proposes a theory of increasing fittedness in therapy that works. The analyst and analysand gradually approach each other, adjust to one another, and become closer to what the other one is touched by. My T thinks psychoanalysis is old fashioned, but I would like to try it.

Originally Posted by SalingerEsme

I love this quotation, and Adam Phillips. I read Steven Stern- Relational Psychoanalysis last week. In it, he discussed Bion saying the analyst should attend each session free of both memory and desire. All I could think of is T.S. Eliot "mixing memory and desire" while winter keeps us warm and hibernating from the feeling stirred by spring. Steven Stern proposes a theory of increasing fittedness in therapy that works. The analyst and analysand gradually approach each other, adjust to one another, and become closer to what the other one is touched by. My T thinks psychoanalysis is old fashioned, but I would like to try it.

Great post!

[Lrad123]

Originally Posted by SalingerEsme

I read Steven Stern- Relational Psychoanalysis last week. The analyst and analysand gradually approach each other, adjust to one another, and become closer to what the other one is touched by.

I downloaded the free sample of his book on Amazon and it looks very interesting to me. So thanks for that. Here is a quote from the introduction that resonates with where I am right now, “Achieving progressive fittedness does not necessarily mean meeting the patient’s needs on the terms that the patient is stating them or complying with some fantasized response that the patient is enactively pulling for. Rather it means co-creating the therapeutic conditions that best enable the patient to work and move towards her mostly implicit therapeutic aims as these become actualized in the analytic setting over time.”

I love poetry and can appreciate the beauty of it, but am not particularly good at it and am frequently confused by it. I feel that way about psychoanalysis as well.

Originally Posted by Merope

I recently went to a couple of lectures on psychoanalysis in literature. The guy giving the lecture was a practising psychoanalyst and also a professor of literature. I don't remember his exact words, but he mentioned something about readers subconsciously projecting their own fantasies onto a given text, making reading subjective.

I really like the Adam Phillips quote...I personally tend to find "useful" anything that is moving, or meaningful or laden with something that intrigues me. I also think that the terms "useful" and "true" are subjective and malleable based on our inner thoughts and feelings. The human mind is like poetry...we often tend to dig deeply for meaning and in that sense, psychoanalysis can't be an exact science. You can't try to make sense of something fluid and oblique using sharp and rigid tools.

I read something similar but pertaining to the author not reader. It makes sense when you read some of the intense psychoanalytic stuff and feel like you are sort of inside the author's mind.

I've felt this way about Otto Kernberg, for example. He is very dark and pessimistic, but complicated, and when reading his material, I got a sense that his theories reflected his own inner world. Which seems quite cold and analytic.

At the same time, I am ok with this perspective in general because there is much art, symbolism, subjectivity involved. But mostly, I think, ways to describe very abstract concepts that perhaps cannot be explained effectively in other ways. Introjection that occurs in infanthood, which is aptly described in object relations theory, used to be explained as demonic possession. Maybe some day it will be explained using physics or biology; even spirituality...but we aren't there yet.

I'm very open to different ways of expressing or explaining things, and looking at things from many different angles.

'The analyst should attend each session free of both memory and desire'. I kind of like the 'free of memory' part. Though conversely I'm disappointed when she seems to have forgotten something.

[unaluna]

Originally Posted by Wild at heart

'The analyst should attend each session free of both memory and desire'. I kind of like the 'free of memory' part. Though conversely I'm disappointed when she seems to have forgotten something.

I liked the "free of memory" part. I didnt need somebody holding my old failures up for me to revisit and prove thats who i will always be (,mom!). No memory meant i could start fresh every session. I did actually say that to him a few times.

I didnt need him to remember my family members names. What, am i gonna forget them if t doesnt remember them?! YKWIM?

[feileacan]

My understanding about the "free memory" part is not that the analyst should not remember anything what the patient has told him but rather that what has been said previously is not going to determine anything in the future sessions. Every session starts a fresh with new opportunities.

My own analyst draws a lot from Bion and neo-Kleinians.
Sure, he analyst remembers many things I've told him but these things don't define me for him and he does not base his expectancies on those things. In that sense every session starts afresh.

[Lrad123]

Originally Posted by feileacan

My own analyst draws a lot from Bion and neo-Kleinians.

I’m curious how you know this. How did it come up? I haven’t had the experience of discussing what theories my therapist draws from. I think it might be interesting, but can’t really imagine the context in which it would come up in therapy.

[feileacan]

Originally Posted by Lrad123

I’m curious how you know this. How did it come up? I haven’t had the experience of discussing what theories my therapist draws from. I think it might be interesting, but can’t really imagine the context in which it would come up in therapy.

It really hasn't come up. He has mentioned that he believes that his function is to contain me (which is Bionian). But otherwise he is writing about this stuff and I've read his writings and he knows I do because I've told him.

We rarely talk about psychoanalytic concepts in sessions. We sometimes have but quite quickly my T has figured that although interesting (to him as well) it really draws attention away from my personal stuff.

This is really off-topic now but I have been considering becoming an analyst myself one day. I'm not sure I'm able to as this is very dependent on how much I am able to work through my borderline and psychotic processes and how much I am able to integrate myself. But for some strange reason my T told me early on in my analysis that I would make a capable analyst. I had no idea what he meant by it then but as time has passed I have figured that maybe I would be able to do that.

[seeker33]

Originally Posted by Merope

I recently went to a couple of lectures on psychoanalysis in literature. The guy giving the lecture was a practising psychoanalyst and also a professor of literature. I don't remember his exact words, but he mentioned something about readers subconsciously projecting their own fantasies onto a given text, making reading subjective.

I really like the Adam Phillips quote...I personally tend to find "useful" anything that is moving, or meaningful or laden with something that intrigues me. I also think that the terms "useful" and "true" are subjective and malleable based on our inner thoughts and feelings. The human mind is like poetry...we often tend to dig deeply for meaning and in that sense, psychoanalysis can't be an exact science. You can't try to make sense of something fluid and oblique using sharp and rigid tools.

Wow Merope, you should be a writer.

[SalingerEsme]

I reading a poem, I work on it three times in a row- first for voice, trying to hear the overall voice behind the text- witty, yearning, mercurial, dark, young etc, second I go line by line diligently working the metrics and mechanics with my theory of voice in mind( why does the line break here? This word works in two ways here. This metaphor means xyz) . Finally the third time I try to read it with a deep understanding of it that' s more effortless. Sometimes it will feel right, sometimes I will start over bc it is like wood that needs the grain sanded more- too rough.

Adam Phillips seems to feel for people in that way, in a processes of listening and checking for what he hears, but letting it all be fragile and ever-changing and quicksilver.