THE TRANSFORMATIONAL POTENTIAL OF THE DIALECTICAL TENSIONS OF THE IN-BETWEEN
Ken Israelstam
Presented at the APAS conference in August 2025.
The paper that I will be presenting is an updated version of my paper published in the International Journal in 2007, entitled “Creativity and dialectical phenomena: from: From dialectical edge to dialectical space’.
Israelstam, K.V. (2007). ‘Creativity and dialectical phenomena: From dialectical
edge to dialectical space’. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 88, pp. 591–607.
Today I want to explore with you a specific dynamic involved in the process of transformation that is meta to and I believe cuts across the various theoretical analytic models, that lies silently in the in-between
To start I will begin with a quote which at first glance might seem so far away from our topic, but you will see is extremely relevant
It’s from Martin Luther King Jr.’s letter written whilst in Birmingham City Jail on April 16, 1963.
I must confess that I am not afraid of the word "tension." I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension, which is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half-truths…. The purpose of our direct-action program is to create a situation so crisis packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation.
Today I would like to emphasize the importance of our capacity to create such a
constructive nonviolent tension in the minds of our patients, so as to help them rise from their pathologically held internalized myths and beliefs. I would also like to emphasise today how we too as therapists can benefit from these tensions in order to free us from our own constricting analytic rituals and beliefs.
I hope to show today how in our work tension, frustration, and emotional disquiet are essential in the facilitation of transformation, and psychic growth, and in particular how much the in-between is implicated in this.
As humans we are always striving and driven towards closure and peace of mind – seeking a closed gestalt.
Leonard Meyer: Emotion and meaning in music (1956). Stated:
“Beethoven by playing incomplete versions of the E major chord, preserved an element of uncertainty in his music, making our brains beg for the one chord he refuses to give us. Beethoven saves that chord for the end”.
I will first look briefly at the neuro-biological evidence for the how tension and frustrations are able to activate brain systems that facilitate the process of transformation by activating our cognitive and emotional systems.
Those survival mechanisms encoded in us and other evolutionary relatives to activate survival, are the same ones that activate the heightened tensions inherent in the irresolvable tensions arising out of opposing dialectical entities.
Under threat, emotional or physical, the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis activates the fright flight fight mechanisms by increasing the levels of cortisol and norepinephrine. These hormones besides activating our basic autonomic nervous systems, also activate such structures as the prefrontal cortex, hippocampus, and amygdala. These structures when facilitated increase cognitive functions, that is enhanced attention, alertness, working memory, information processing and problem solving.
It is interesting to note though that the very mechanisms that facilitate our learning capacities when faced with excessive psychic distress, can also overwhelm the system by over activating the amygdala, shutting down the thinking Prefrontal cortex leading to re-traumatization rather than transformation. It’s all, we will see, about delicate balance.
Today I will be focusing on a specific source of tension in our work, that is the tensions inherent in the in-between of dialectical tensions, that I hope to demonstrate are ever present in our analytic situation.
Drawing on the likes of Bion and Winnicott and contempory analysts Ogden and Hoffman, I will describe how these increased dialectic tensions, flourish not only in the space between dialectical entities, but most potently at what I have termed the dialectical edge. These tensions at the edge when contained, have the potential to activate creative and productive transformations. This however will depend on the therapist’s capacity to contain/hold at the edge, the arousing and intense affects, such as, anxiety, dread, excitement and passion, that are inevitably generated at these pivotal relational moments. It is this containing/holding capacities that will determine whether the patient will move forward into the lightness of a creative, reflective dialectical space, or backwards into collapsed, non-dialectical, non-reflective darkness, where fluid oscillation is transformed into rigid ossification.
The key is dialectical balance within the dielectric of high stress vs high levels of holding/containment—enough stress to stimulate growth, but not so much that it disrupts.
I found Ogden’s definition of a dialectic very helpful, whilst grappling to understand the very complex, and apparently paradoxical relationship that indeed all dialectical elements, have with one another.
“A dialectic is a process in which each of two opposing concepts creates, informs preserves and negates one another, each stand in a dynamic ever-changing relationship with the other. The dialectical process moves toward integration, but integration is never complete. Each integration creates a new dialectical opposition and a new dynamic tension.” (Ogden 1992a, p.208).
Because dialectics create, preserve and negate one another, they are inherently paradoxical, confusing, incomplete and irresolvable. It is this lack of closure that if not overwhelming, opens up a space for more active creative thought and awareness.
There are many universal interdependent dialectics that oppose- connect preserve and negate.
So, let’s start with the most profound and pivotal one, that is the life-death one. They are two opposing concepts, each are defined by the other, they create, inform, preserve and negate one another, each stand in a dynamic ever-changing relationship with the other.
Schumpeter (1942), an economist, described the life-death dialectic in his notion of “creative destruction,” creativity Vs destruction, life vs death as a situation where as he states that the “gale of destruction is followed by the creation of the new”.
I need to emphasise that these dialectical entities are not just words, but rather are states of mind, states of being and states of experiencing. Here is a personal living experience.
Living near the Ku- rin- gai forests I have often experienced the death-despair at witnessing the ashened blackness of the aftermath of raging fires. However, when visiting the sight, weeks later, often instead of finding a forest graveyard, I’ve been greeted by life. Young green Banksia seedlings standing triumphantly in the now enriched blackened soil. Their seeds have been freed from their ridged encasement by the heat of the flames. An evocative fluid edge had arisen within the inherent life - death, creativity - destruction, growth – stagnation dialectical struggles.
There is a particular edge within this dialectic, where too much fire could destroy the fauna altogether, yet where too little heat, or too much cooling, would be unable to facilitate the liberation and germination of the vital seeds. This edge is where we have maximum tension, where there is heightened potential for life/creativity as well as death/destruction. It is the understanding of this vital edge that I would like to explore with you.
I will try to illustrate later how by interacting with our patients what I call “dialectically attuned” manner, we may be able to hold and contain them at this crucial and emotionally intense edge, long enough, for a positive transformation to be able to take place, helping to free them from their suffocating banksia-like encasement. Of course, too little containment of this “relational fire” could lead to a breakdown of their trust and alliance.
Tensions in relation to our psychoanalytic thinkers
The virtue of the unknown, the incomplete, and the absent, in the development of our higher mental functions, and how an incomplete gestalt can act as a rich recourse for our creative thoughts, is well known to many psychoanalytic thinkers.
Freud (1920p 7-64), without the language and concept of dialectics, saw Thanatos -life and Eros -death, as forces that work in opposition and yet are interconnected
“The instinct to preserve life is at odds with the instinct to return to an inorganic state."
Klein’s (1964), well-known dialectic is the good breast-bad breast. Good when present, bad when absent. With optimal mothering the dialectical dilemma is resolved when the infant realises that the good and bad breast belong to the same mother.
Edna O’Shaughnessy (1964) in her article “The Absent Object” notes; “The absent object is a spur to the development of thought” (p.34).
At this point I want to elaborate and focus more specifically and deeply on the contributions made in particular by Bion and Winnicott.
Bion’s contribution.
‘Tolerance of frustration is essential for thought development … The absent object/
breast gives the child his/her first opportunity to know reality through thought.’
(Bion, 1962, p. 30).
Bion was skeptical of premature closure and relief in order for analysts to reduce tension that he saw as a vital energy required for the transformation of patients unmentalised, inchoate, fragmented mental state.
It's in this spirit that Bion recommended that therapists be without memory and desire, not knowing, and to tolerate uncertainly. He was concerned that analysts who knew it all, or interpret too quickly would create premature closure robbing the analysis of their important frustration and tensions. Bion would have recognized that tension was far from being an obstacle, but rather the fuel for transformation.
Although Bion (1962) did not frame these recommendations in dialectical terms, I would like to take the liberty of framing them dialectically as a way of explaining more closely the mechanisms involved in the activation of frustration and its consequent increase in tension.
For example, for us to be without memory, desire and certainty, in human terms is counterintuitive. To be totally without desire would leave us with a rather flat, unmotivated and unproductive state of mind. To be without memory and pervasive uncertainty might lead to an overload of unproductive tensions. Therefore, I would propose then that productive tension required for transformation arises in response to the ensuing dialectical struggle within and between knowing and not knowing, desire and lack of desire, uncertainty and certainty (Israelstam 2009).
Finally, a word about one of Bion’s fundamental dialectical contributions, that is his container-contained, that is inferred in this statement: -
“The choice that matters to the psycho-analyst is one (that is the dialectic) that lies between procedures designed to evade frustration and those designed to modify it. That is the critical decision.1962 p18.
Tension here exists between the patients unmentalised, fragmented mental state -Beta elements, and the therapist’s capacity for emotional regulation and containment, allowing for the alpha processing of the the patients highly activated chaotic emotionally state.
We will see later, how vital adequate containment is, in the development of a creative dialectical space
Winnicott’s contribution
Winnicott, had a deep respect and a profound intuitive understanding of dialectic phenomena. (Ogden, 1992b) He understood how our creativity and vitality, could lie trapped deeply within a “false self”, not unlike the Banksia seeds within their “rigid casings,” waiting for an opportunity for “true - self” liberation.
Winnicott (1971a), stresses the value of the unformed and unintegrated;
“The searching can come only from desultory formless functioning…….It is only here, in this unintegrated state….that which we can describe as creative can appear.”(p. 64.)
Although not directly stated, it is fair to assume that Winnicott understood that the
formless functioning in an unintegrated state, together with the irresolvable tensions inherent in dialectical phenomena, would be a source of valuable tensions.
Winnicott draws on a multitude of dialectical phenomena, such as me-not me, subject-object, illusion-reality, internal-external, and true self-false self.
Central to Winnicott’s theories are his ideas of transitional object and transitional/potential space, (1971). They both involve in different ways, the process of moving from a state of dependence/merger on the mother, to a more independent separate, creative and alive existence, the place of play and the true self.
In simple terms they are about the creative and potentially transformational capacities of the in-betweenness. They embody in their genesis, common core dialectical dilemmas, i.e., me-not me; inner-outer; illusion- reality, subject- object and dependency-independence
The transitional object is the infant’s “first me- not-me possession,” Its neither the self nor the mother, but embodies both, (Winnicott 1971b, p.1). It might be said that the transitional object acts as a “parachute” ensuring the infant a soft landing, protecting the delicate emerging self from being fractured as a result of too sudden a dislocation from mother-infant oneness.
Winnicott (1971a) describes transitional/potential space in the following way – “For creative playing and cultural experience, the position is the potential space…that exists (but cannot exist) between baby and object (mother or part mother).” (p. 107).
Ogden (1992) elaborates further on Winnicott’s potential space when he describes it in the following way; “Winnicott’s potential space can be understood as a state of mind based on a series of dialectical relationships between the me-not me (Transitional object) and the potential space i.e., connected-separate, internal and external, fantasy and reality, symbol and symbolised, etc. (p.231). The transitional object then is an object that has the potential to open up into a space.
When we talk of Winnicott’s potential space. We can describe it in two ways. We might say that this is a space with the potential to become a reflective-dialectic space. In this sense then, the space is present, but not reflective yet, as it is filled with unchallenged illusion. (Winnicott 1971a, p.108; Ogden 1992, p205). This might be likened to a circus tent that has been erected, but as yet is filled with immobilised performers still imbued with omnipotent and illusionary fantasies, who have not yet been ready to engage with the real world outside. This space is still then a potential space. It is only when the participants are secure enough, held enough can they become creatively active. There is a point or edge where the omnipotence meets reality. This I call the dialectical edge.
If we look carefully at Winnicott’s work, I believe that there is some evidence, that he himself might have been considering the notion of a dialectical edge.
When Winnicott (1996), refers to “the position of potential space”, he goes on to say. “I refer to the hypothetical area that exists…between the baby and mother object…during the phase of repudiation of the mother as not-me, that is at the end of being merged in with the mother object (p.107). {Italics mine.} Winnicott then goes on to describe the transition that occurs at the end……… “… from a state of being merged in with the mother… the baby is at a stage of separating the mother from the self.” (p.107). This end of merger, that Winnicott describes, is also the beginning of separation. In this sense the finite and intense meeting of end and beginning, could well be termed an “edge”, the edge within the merger - separate dialectic.
There is another brief description, in Winnicott’s (1971c) writing, that I believe gives further credence to my idea of a position within a dialectical space, that I have named the dialectical edge, that he calls the contiguity- continuity moment.
“It may perhaps be seen…. how important it can be for the analyst to recognise the existence of this place, the only place where play can start, a place at the continuity – contiguity moment where transitional phenomena originate.” (p103) (Italics mine). The contiguity moment is where the infant moves from a raw and primitive fragmented world of contiguous sensations to a more organized, continuous and coherent sense of self. I believe then, that he is describing a dialectical edge, a contact point where at a given moment or edge, two dialectical entities contiguity -continuity connect.
Winnicott (1971a) appears aware of how critical this end/edge is, in our clinical work, alerting us to our potential to harm patients at this critical point. “This is the same danger area that is arrived at sooner or later in all psychiatric treatments…with the therapist’s readiness to let go (a break of containment) …. any move from the therapist away from a state of being merged in with the patient is under dire suspicion, so that disaster threatens” (p107) (italics mine). It is this “danger area”, this “end”, this “moment”, that I have called the “dialectical edge”. It is at this edge that the dialectics of life-death, and related dialectics, me vs. not- me, merger vs. separation, and change vs. homeostasis etc., enact their inevitable dialectical dance. (see clinical example below).
With the fire then, the edge is as at that critical point/edge between heightened heat and degree of cooling. Too much heat unabated by cooling will result in disintegration and death. Too rapid a cooling will dampen any potential for creative growth. This I believe is Winnicott’s danger area.
The importance of holding and containment.
Although Winnicott and Bion, have at the core of their theory of mind, as described the notion of the incomplete gestalt, and understand well how the anxiety and frustration, arising out this state, provides the “fuel” for our reflective and symbolic capacity. They also recognise however that overwhelming tensions, untempered by “holding”, for Winnicott, and “containment” for Bion, can lead to; “a failure to play”, Winnicott(1971a), and “nameless dread”, Bion (1962),
Winnicott (1971a) notes that “Playing is essentially satisfying. This is true even when it leads to a high degree of anxiety. There is a degree of anxiety (however) that is unbearable and destroys play.” (p. 52). “The potential space happens only in relation to a feeling of confidence on the part of the baby, that is, confidence related to the dependability of the mother-figure or environment.” (Winnicott 1971c, p.100).
Bion (1962) in his theories of the container – contained, asserts how crucial it is for the mother/ therapist to be able to be in a state of reverie, a state of mind that is able to think about and, process the inchoate, fragmented and persecutory mental elements – beta elements - that the infant cannot bear or mentally process. That is, the mother needs to have a capacity for reverie and alpha function.
This capacity for holding and containment is often poorly represented as an internal function in deeply troubled patients (such as Jim, to be described below). In these situations, we as analysts need to be able to provide this third function. This “Threeness “is vital for the development and maintenance of a dialectical space and therefore for symbolic function and creative thought. (Ogden 1992).
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An example: We will see with my patient who suffers from a too-near too-far dilemma.
When he
When there is a breakdown or absence of a dialectically aware “third”, fluid dialectical oscillation is lost. It is under these conditions that there is then a risk, as will be illustrated below, of dialectical ossification and dialectical atelectasis.
Case illustration
In this illustration I will be exploring two particular dialectical entities. One relating to me as the therapist and one that relates to my patient. The dialectic regarding my patient, is the too near vs too far one (Israelstam 1989a; 1989b 2018), and for myself ritual vs spontaneity, ( Hoffman 1998).
My patient Jim, a male in his late 30’s, an environmental scientist, sought out an analysis with me because he felt that he was living in a vacuum, that his life had little meaning or joy, and that he lacked inspiration and drive. He acknowledged that he struggled to maintain ongoing intimate relationships, and that he was tired of living alone.
He described how there were two main ways in which he could find some relief from his pain and loneliness. The one involved him immersing himself in his research and work as a marine biologist. He stated that it gave him a certain amount of pleasure and relief, when he was able to discover new shells and marine animals while exploring the rock pools in the marine reserve near his home. The other activity had to do with his longstanding weekend activity of sky diving. “People can’t believe that a geek like me would have the courage to jump out of planes. I love that free fall feeling, a mixture of fear and excitement”. He admitted that he was painfully lonely, and that he would enjoy these activities more if he had company, but that he was fearful of this prospect, as he had been too burnt in past relationships.
He told me that he had suffered a great deal as a child. His father left when he was only two, and his mother had many partners. He told me that between partners she was “all over me” but when she found a man, she dropped me like “a hot cake.” I was an only child, and always longed for a brother or sister. I tended to cling to one friend at a time, but these relationships were always interrupted by our frequent moves. I’m sure all this has screwed up my ability to relate properly.
Jim was tall, and rather uncoordinated. He almost always wore khaki “bush” clothes that hung untidily on him. His fine features were all but covered by a thick black beard. During the assessment, he made little eye contact, and seemed relieved at the opportunity to lie on the couch. His agony and discomfort in discussing emotionally laden issues was palpable. He would almost instinctively and automatically withdraw and avoid emotional tensions, at times curling up almost in a foetal position. He spoke in guarded flat low tones, and had difficulty in being able to free associate, his thinking and responses were often rather concrete, and lacked imagination and elaboration In Winnicott’s terms, one might say that Jim had lost his capacity for creative play.
I was struck by the persistence of the “paralysing airless fog”, that seemed to occupy the mental emotional space between us, depriving it of it’s vital and creative potential. While grappling to maintain a creative reflective space with Jim, I developed associations a reverie that helped me to bring forth a situation that enabled me to attune more accurately to Jim’s state of mind. I recalled my painful and distressing days when I worked in a crowded African hospital on the outskirts of Johannesburg. One of the most frequent and dramatic emergencies that we had to deal with, was the condition known as atelectasis i.e., collapse of the lung, most commonly caused by stab wounds. In these situations, it was critical to get the lungs inflated as soon as possible to try and open up a space to allow oxygen to flow. If this was not done, the alveoli air sacks collapse. As with the atelectic lungs, the vital potential space between Jim and I was often in or near, a state of collapse. The dialectic that I particularly wish to focus on with Jim is the one that involves the closeness -separate, the too-near, too-far or claustrophobic -agoraphobic dialectic.
Jim’s traumatic experience of closeness and separateness in his relationship to significant others in his early development, led to the development of specific relationship templates, that Bowlby has termed internal working models(Bowlby 1973 ).There are various ways of describing these relationship schemas, I prefer to talk of them as internal belief systems, (Israelstam 1989a; 1989b), or better still experiential believing systems, experiential and believing because they are felt to be true and are experienced in the here and now. These encoded traumas, lie in waiting, just below the surfaces, ready to be activated by interpersonal signals filtered by the highly subjective lenses of their believing systems.
Jim’s believing system that arose out of his formative experience with significant others, gave rise to the characteristic “trio” of anxieties/phobias relating to merger and
abandonment, i.e., to hurt, be hurt, and the loss of self. (Israelstam 1989a,1989b).
Through the understanding of Jim’s transference responses, I developed a picture of his believing systems, that could read something like this. “It is dangerous to be close and love too much. It is dangerous to trust. The very person you trust and love will betray you. They will do this because I have been too needy, too much. Maybe it’s better to separate and move away, but then I am terrified that I will, disappear, and not return.”
Whenever he found his needs and longings drawing him close to me, his “amygdala early warning systems” were activated and would go into withdrawal. No sooner would he have distanced, when he would feel isolated and abandoned, causing him to panic, which would then trigger his attaching behaviour etc. Jim’s defences against the anxieties inherent in the too near –too far dialectic, as described above, would take two forms. He would either collapse into a state of boundaryless merger, or one of arrogant defiant isolation. These states could last for weeks, leaving me struggling to breath/think whilst enveloped in this atelectic mindless fog.
A word about what I have termed a dialectically attuned therapist:
In dialectical terms, the reflective third might be said to be represented by what I have termed a dialectically attuned therapist, who functions by mentally/ emotionally processing the information that is continually being generated by the colliding differences activated by opposing yet interdependent dialectical elements. The dialectically attuned therapist regulates the oscillation according to the system’s demands, by attending to each dynamic figure-ground oscillation in relation to each unique moment in its relational configuration. In Jim’s case it’s the to-near too-far one.
I hold him when he is in a state of anxious merger as well when he in an agoraphobic isolated state.
It is hoped that over time his beliefs relating to these states will be disconfirmed.
Jim was in his 4th year of his analysis, and was slowly beginning to trust and open up more. His associations flowed more, and he began to report dreams that often illustrated his attachment and struggles with me. The transference had become more openly eroticised and sensually explicit. He spoke of how soothing he found the smell in my room, and how he would love to capture it in a bottle, to sniff in bed while trying to get to sleep.
It was a Friday just prior to a long weekend. As he walked toward the couch, he slowed down, making a small detour towards me. He said, in an anxious but excited voice, that there was a National Geographic magazine in my waiting room, that had a feature article on climate change and its effects on the Great Barrier Reef, and that he would love to take this home for bedtime reading. I was taken of my guard, and became aware of the flood of anxiety and disquiet that had come over me. My response was clearly defensive and unthought.
“By taking my magazine I believe you are attempting to manage your feelings relating to our parting…. denying our separateness and your dependence on me…. avoiding the emotional pain of your envious and possessive feelings towards me”.
He blurted out in a cutting and hurt tone “You’d think I was taking the last shirt of your back!” He then became silent and withdrawn. I began to experience feelings of dread, guilt and frustrated helplessness, regretting that I had not given the situation more thought, causing us to go backwards. Again, there was a sense of being engulfed by a dark paralyzing fog, my mind became dulled and I was finding it difficult to think coherently.
In that I understand analysis to take place in a bi-personal field, I’d like to explore the role that I as therapist have had in the development or destruction of the analytic “play” space, between Jim and I. I reflected on my interpretation -made without proper attunement but a rather typical one according to the rules (at least as understood by myself). I began to recognise that my interpretation must have come across as criticism.
Hoffman (1998) addresses this in the dialectic that he terms ritual vs. spontaneity (p 219). Here, Hoffman explores the tension that emerges out of the dialectic between the therapist’s role and rule determined behaviour that he calls ritual, and his personal emotional presence that he terms spontaneity, where he talks of “throwing away the book.”
This was earlier in my career, when I recognise now how rule/ritual bound I was.
I will try now to show how this imbalanced ritual that I have understood to be in response to my own anxieties and tensions arising out of my interactions with Jim, disrupted our trust.
As mentioned earlier Jim was in the powerful grip of his rigidly held believing systems relating to the too-near too far, claustrophobic -agoraphobic dialectic. He had collapsed into a defiant mistrustful state of mind. I struggled to remain alert, thoughtful and hopeful, in relation to the intense darkness and despair that hung over us, that threatening to derail our work.
“You’re stuck in the dark ages of psychoanalysis. You’re like a rusted-up robot! I’ve had enough traumas in my life; I don’t need to come here to get more pain and rejection”! This left me feeling anxious, with little reflective capacity.
In the midst of this difficult phase, he recounted the following dream;
“I felt like a little boy, a street urchin. I stared longingly into a window of a pastry shop. The bearded shop owner, who resembled you, appeared critical and stern yet beckoned to me to come in. I was confused and anxious, and stood immobilised staring. He came to the door with a plate full of scones. I was very suspicious; I was sure that the scones were stale left-overs. I didn’t want to chance being humiliated; I slunk away, feeling desperately hungry.”
I felt further criticised. To me, his dream echoed his experience of me producing “stale”, mean interpretations relating to the “National Geographic” episode. I continued to lose my capacity to think clearly, and responded with increasing defensiveness and unsureness seeking the comfort of my known analytic dogma, my ritual that related to theories, that I had studied, involving the notions of envious attacks, impasses and negative therapeutic reactions etc. (Klein 1957), (Rosenfeld 1971; 1987.). I continued, in my unreflective state, to make the following sorts of interpretations, not unlike those I made in response to Jim’s request for my magazine.
“Your regarding my scones/interpretations as stale leftovers, I believe is your way of denigrating the help I offer you; I think it reveals that you resent your dependence on me….. you are unaware of the extent of your envy, and how much this interferes with your willingness to take from me!”
The more reactionary I became, the more he would protest that I was cold, rigid, and self-interested.
My responses and interpretations felt unhelpful, and only appeared to be retraumatising him. It did not occur to me at the time that I had become involved in an enactment that only served to confirm his worst anxieties that he was too much, that he was unwanted, and that whenever he trusted someone with his needs, he would be let down.
Winnicott’s (1971a p 54), words echoed in my mind. “Psychotherapy is done in the overlap of two play areas between the patient and therapist. If the therapist cannot play, then he is not suitable for the work. If the patient cannot play, then something needs to be done to enable the patient to become able to play”.
With Winnicott in mind, it began to become clearer to me that Jim’s increasing inability to play, was directly related to my own loss of freedom and spontaneity, in favour of my ridged turning to analytic ritual. As I turned to my internal analyst/supervisor, for some well needed psychic resuscitation, my mental space became more “aerated”. I began to reflect on what had happened to our “play space”, what had been going on in me, in Jim, and in us.
Jim’s experiential believing systems were enshrined in stone. They were immovable, and filled his mind with intense unquestioned “dogmas” and “truths”, characteristic of a fundamentalist mind. It was becoming apparent to me that I too, in parallel with Jim, had begun to resort to my own dogma/ritual, as I became more anxious and defensive! My less reflective state of mind also rendered me more susceptible to Jim’s coercive attributions.
ENACTMENT AT THE DIALECTICAL EDGE
When I was at the edge within the too near - too far dialectic (Israelstam 1989a; 1989b, 2018), in relation to Jim, my increasing anxieties and tension (not recognized at the time) began to override my holding-containing capacity.
Sandler speaks of how patients through coercive projective identification, are able to script us into becoming past persecuting and rejecting figures. Jim was succeeding in scripting me into the role of perpetrator in his experiential drama. (Sandler 1976).
I had become Jim’s rejecting and persecuting figure, activating his primitive omnipotent destructive anxieties, fears of annihilation and fragmentation. These represented, as stated earlier, by the triad that relates to core intimacy anxieties - to hurt; be hurt; and the loss of self. (Israelstam 1989a; 1989b)
It was becoming clearer, that it was not only Jim’s capacity to influence me via his powerful projections, but my own resonating anxieties that made me responsive to this. I came to understand that when Jim began to open up to me as he did, with his longings, in the form of the magazine or the captured smell of the room, my anxieties relating to closeness were activated, causing me to seek distance through my ritualized interpretive stance. As analysts we are not only called upon to manage critical attacks but also intense erotisised and primitive longings such as Jim’s.
It is vital that through our own emotional/reflective work, to manage these anxieties, so as to be able to provide the free oscillating reflection and holding-containment i.e., dialectic attunement, that our patients require at this crucial point.
As my dialectical attunement began to wane, the conditions for the collapse/ atelectasis of our productive dialectical space increased. At the most intense moments of closeness or distance, I would experience myself collapsing either into withdrawal, or over- anxious placating behavior, on one occasion ending the session prematurely, and on another, going ten minutes overtime! I had failed to hold/contain my own and Jim’s anxiety at the crucial edge within the too near too far dialectic. I had indeed ended up retraumatizing him, confirming his negatively held experiential believing system. I had, I came to understand, become caught up in an enactment.
We have come to understand that enactments have potent transformational potential, and are opportunities for newness and change.
It is my understanding that the edge and enactment have a very intimate relationship with one another, and would like to focus on and explore this in relation to my work with Jim.
I believe that both Jim and I were both unconsciously aware of the powerful anxieties that managed to hold us back in the “emotional fog”. It was as if we “knew”, that one way of dealing with our avoidance, would be to risk moving closer to the edge within the fraught dialectic. The edge because of its inherent flux, fluidity and experience- near emotionality, provided a rich and evocative context, in which the enactments could unfold.
One of Jim’s strengths, has been his willingness, all be it after a time of withdrawal and hurt, to give me another chance to get it right. In this sense, he began to actively participate in the resuscitation of the atelectic emotional space that had occurred
Betty Joseph talks about a particular aspect of Freuds repetition compulsion as an opportunity to be able to repair and change that which was not able to be repaired at the traumatizing time (Joseph 1959). Perhaps hopefully then I was drawn into this unresolved drama by Jim, with the hope that a new relational context and configuration would occur that would help to bring about mastery and positive change.
Jim had eventually, with his perseverance, managed to “nudge” me right up to the edge of the “too near – too far” dialectic. Unfortunately, because of my inability to hold/contain Jim at this evocative threshold, as described earlier, he tilted away from a creative newness, back into the darkness of mistrust. When a collapse of a potentially creative reflective space, occurs during an enactment in this way, it could be termed a collapsed enactment. If on the other hand, the analyst is able to hold/contain the impending enactment, at the edge, or is able to resuscitate the already collapsed space, we could term this a reflective enactment. It is these reflective enactments that ultimately enable the edge to be transformed into a creative space.
. In one of Jim’s more recent attempts, he said the following: -
“Although I’m very anxious and scared a lot of the time, I actually enjoy risk-taking and challenges.” He had told me over the years, of his interest in sky diving. On this occasion he was telling me how much he enjoyed sky diving. He said that he would only do it at one centre that had an impeccable reputation for safety and diligence. “I always watch while my parachute is being packed, not only to learn how to do it myself, but to make sure that the person is concentrating! I’m not ready to jump on my own yet, and only do it in tandem, and that’s only with the instructor, who I’ve come to trust. If I don’t trust the instructor, I don’t jump.” I don’t remember exactly what I said then, (I cringe now!) but I probably would have referred defensively to the difficulty he had in trusting me! I still was not attuning to him correctly.
He continued to persevere in helping me to understand, by bringing forth the following dream, that had a similar theme to the parachute story, and the pastry shop dream. In retrospect, I can see now that these dreams, that I responded so defensively to, were his attempts to shed some light into the darkness, not unlike the defiant green banksia shoots that sprang out of the charred ruins on the forest floor, described earlier.
“I was in a stormy sea. The ship broke into pieces. I was clamoring alone in the water, terrified that I would drown. I saw a boat coming out of the shadows. You were standing there, beckoning to me to come into the boat. I couldn’t get to the boat and I was very unsure. I didn’t feel safe. I managed to grab onto a large piece of the boat. You kept telling me to let go and come to you. I was too scared. I felt that it would be safer to hold on to the driftwood.”
I was silent, as I usually was, waiting for his associations. On this occasion however, he rather stubbornly said, “I want you to tell me what you think!” It was beginning to realize that I had indeed been using my analytic knowledge (Ritual), defensively, to anchor myself, and that to insist that he do the associating, so that I could be loyal to the “correct” technique, would again be more in the service of my defenses, rather than in the service of his development. Again, this could well be seen to be akin to my dropping him, by putting my needs first, as his mother did.
As my “ritual” moved to background, and my “spontaneity” to the foreground, I felt freer to explore my more intuitive and personal responses. Instead of being dominated by the dark death-like elements of Jim’s psyche, and my own discomfort, I was able to tilt toward more creative and positive thoughts, relating to his quest for mastery. I had a distinct feeling that I was being tested, to see, if I was capable of putting him before my rigid psychoanalytic ritual.
Weiss, (1986), posits that patients repeat traumas with their analysts, with the unconscious wish to test out, what he calls “pathological beliefs’ (akin to my believing systems), within the context of the patient therapist relationship. They do this with the hope that these pathological beliefs will be disconfirmed, making it possible for them to begin to take in new experiences and new perspectives of self and other. I was beginning to understand that this edge was a place where he could best be challenging, testing my capacity to be able to hold and contain him. In Winnicott’s (1969) terms, it might be said that I was being tested as to whether I could survive his “usage”.
I said to him that I thought he had brought this dream to me, as a way of trying to test whether I would yet again, use it to make interpretations about him not trusting me. I said to him, “You want to know if you have been able to get through to me… if I would put you before my own need to hold to my analytic ways. I understand now that when you were telling me about your parachute instructor, you were letting me know that you are prepared to, and do take risks here with me, that you took a huge risk when you requested my magazine. You have also been trying to let me know that when you are most open and close to me, I always seem to manage to find a way of dropping you.
You want me to know that before you’d be ready to get into my boat or have me pack your parachute, you would need to be surer that I can trust your need and affection for me, that they will not overwhelm me. I also suggested to him that perhaps in his choice of magazine, on “climate change”, he was letting me know that he was interested in trying to work with me to find ways of improving our eco-system, but that he needed my cooperation.
He seemed decidedly relieved when I said this, smiled and said, “I think you’re getting it at last”
With further reflection, I realized that Jim and I were at a very delicate edge within the too near too far dialectic, where both of our claustrophobic-agoraphobic anxieties – all be they asymmetrical, were heightened and activated.
As his attachment to me intensified and deepened, so did his conscious fears (of closeness), based on unconscious wishes (to merge), increase. As his pull towards me escalated, so did his push away from me increase.
I began to understand, that this edge because of its transformational potential, was a crucial and vital place. It is here that Jim could best test the validity of his believings that arose out of his traumatic experiences, in his early relationships with significant others.
As my dialectical attunement improved, I began to reflect on alternative ways of seeing and experiencing his and my behaviors. It is true that throughout his analysis, Jim was often plagued by powerful destructive persecutory anxieties that were related to intolerable envy and hatred of our separateness. What I believed I missed though, was an understanding of the delicate balance that existed between these more destructive impulses – akin to death, and his new found hope and willingness to venture forward tentatively into a close and trusting relationship with me- akin to life. If Jim was to risk moving forward into “life”, I recognize now how important it was for me to be able to provide the holding and containment that he needed at that edge. In my anxiety, I had foregrounded his more destructive elements in my interpretations, loosing touch with his more positive strides. I can see now, that his powerful projections were not simply, designed to undermine my thinking, but were likely now, I believe, to be projections that were there to test my own capacity to contain/hold his intense anxieties at the dialectical edge within the too near- too far dialectic. My propensity to experience his projections as evacuative or undermining, were probably more a function of my own anxiety within this very powerful dialectic.
Recently Jim had a positive dream that revealed that we were beginning to turn a corner.
“I was in my room downstairs. It was a hot humid day. I was feeling terribly lonely I had no air conditioner. The older man who lived upstairs, had been asking me to come upstairs to his place to play chess, but I always made excuses
(My waiting room is downstairs, and I’m upstairs.) I couldn’t make up my mind, I was anxious. I felt like a little lost soul. I didn’t want to humiliate myself by being told to go away. I pushed myself to go. It was such a relief to be there. It felt cool and fresh. We played chess – I’m not sure who won.”
The dream was obvious to both of us. We didn’t talk much that session. Near the end, while wiping away some tears, he quietly said, “It’s as if I can feel my mind breathing.”
Discussion
I have in this paper focused on 2 pivotal dialectical entities, for me as analyst ritual vs spontaneity, and for Jim the too near – too far one
When Jim first started his therapy, he spoke of living in a vacuum, and that his life had little meaning or joy. I came to understand that this experience could be explained as one where as he had been unable to be close nor separate, it meant that he was left to float aimlessly in a no-person no contact zone -lost alone in liminal space.
I have attempted to illustrate how Jim’s fears inherent in the closeness-distance (too near-too far) dialectic, activated in him believing systems related to the triad of anxieties; to hurt, be hurt and the loss of self. These anxieties were at their peak at the dialectical edge. As much as he yearned for meaningful contact, his early traumas inhibited and at times crushed his normal developmental strivings, hopes and desires. I have tried to emphasize how these believing systems, have the potential to be confirmed or disconfirmed. This depended on how well I was able to hold/contain these powerful affects and unprocessed mental states in Jim that came alive in me as well.
As my anxieties increased, I began to use my knowledge defensively, tilting toward the ritual pole of the ritual-spontaneity dialectic. This clearly only served to render Jim more anxious. He had made it clear that he would only “sky-dive” if he could do this in tandem with an “instructor” that he had confidence in, and trusted.
As I began to work hard at processing my own anxieties and avoidant behaviors at the edge, I felt freer allowing my more spontaneous intuition to guide me, I was able to provide the holding and containment that Jim had not yet internalized for himself. As my dialectical attunement improved, our atelectic space became aerated, enabling Jim to mentally/emotionally “breath”.
I want to stress that these “collapses” and despairing “fogs” as occurred with Jim, far from indicating the presence of an intractable impasse, often paradoxically herald the presence of a potentially vital transformational edge. This I believe can best be discovered through examining and reflecting on the particular countertransference responses that come alive at these edges.
Conclusion
I have attempted to illustrate how therapy is most productive at the edge of tolerable discomfort—too little tension leads to stagnation, too much leads to overwhelm. The analyst must navigate this dialectic, allowing space for frustration while containing enough anxiety to prevent fragmentation. I hoped to have shown how it is this this productive tension is what facilitates learning, transformation, and psychic growth and how vital this edge is, particularly within our psychoanalytic context. It is important, I believe, to identify this place, so that we can make maximum use out of its generative potential.
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