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Danielle Knafo’s “The Sexual Illusionist” is examined from the perspective of working unobtrusively with unsymbolized and unrepresented states in the register of enactment. Knafo’s paper offers a u...

This paper engages with the experience of being both a symbolic and actual father and theorizes the tension between between being “The Father” and “A Father” and describes the resulting dilemmas an...

I outline the concept of the unobtrusive relational group analyst and the related concepts of the flow of enactive engagement, psychoanalytic companioning, and the work of the narrative in group analysis. A clinical example is offered to illustrate these concepts.

The concept of psychoanalytic companioning is reviewed. The commentaries of Hirsch and Newirth are addressed. Hirsch’s dichotomizations are queried and found to constrain the concept of psychoanalytic companioning. Psychoanalytic companioning is offered as a unique form of psychoanalytic knowing in and of itself. Resonance is found with much of Newirth’s commentary, and his question of the relation of psychoanalytic companioning to self psychology is addressed.

This article introduces an approach to group analysis that places dissociation of traumatic experience at the center of group interaction. Healing in group is regarded as hinging on the enactment of unformulated and dissociated experience and affect. Enactments are regarded as involving the members of the group, the group as a whole, and the group analyst. Clinical examples are offered to illustrate the enactment of dissociated trauma that was unable to be suffered earlier and the enactment of absence and neglect that is non-represented. In this hermeneutic conception, the group comes to narrate what has happened but never been experienced, and healing accrues through the group’s witnessing and making affectively real what was hitherto unsayable and unthinkable. The group analyst uses and shares his or her own experience to facilitate this process.

Thomas Burkhalter is complemented on so vividly bringing the reader into his personal struggles to find a true masculinity in the unforgiving context of contemporary South Africa where White masculinity is associated with apartheid. The struggle to be free of old identifications with the patriarchal order and gender binaries saturate the paper, and attention is drawn to the lingering presence of older conceptions of masculinity as a monolithic concept that leaves women as victims and nurturers and the male as dominant. Burkhalter’s clinical vignette is examined and found to illustrate well his struggle and to capture the vulnerability to genderized enactments and the enduring presence of the old order manifested by a reliance on defense analysis that constrains his construal of Mr. Jones’s statement that he is “after all the man in the house.” Potential alternative meanings of this phrase that foreground grief, hope, and a plea for companioning in pain are offered and a deeper engagement with Mr. and Mrs....

(2015). From Psychoanalysis to Group Analysis: The Pioneering Work of Trigant Burrow. International Journal of Group Psychotherapy: Vol. 65, No. 3, pp. 459-477.

I take up Matt Aibel’s dilemma of how to explore a patient’s inner world and the intersubjective experience of the treatment when the patient is not willing to engage in this or take anything from the analyst. I suggest that Matt serves his patient well by allowing himself to be drawn into the patient’s world on the patient’s terms. I focus on the emergence of a dead aliveness that Matt comes to fruitfully live with the patient. I suggest a process of enacted mutual regression and propose that a process of the flow of enacted engagement functions as an interpersonal version of free association that involves both patient and analyst in the field of treatment. I address the false binary of an active vs. holding/containing position for the analyst, and suggest that the latter can involve a very active engagement with the patient.

I express my appreciation for Michal Rieck's thoughtful and fully felt reading of my paper. I underline her points that the regression that an unobtrusive yet fully engaged analyst can allow, is not solely a phenomenon in work with more disturbed patients, and that the essence of this position is to be without separateness. I outline a process of the “flow of enactive engagement,” which fosters a narrative unfolding of the field of the treatment. I suggest that the flow of enactive engagement is a contemporary mutual form of enacted free association and that Rieck is correct in saying that from my perspective psychoanalytic cure need not involve the analyst's interpretation. The mutual enactment itself can be the interpretation.

I describe an unobtrusive relational approach to the psychoanalytic treatment of nonalive and nonspeakable states and ways of being. I build upon a contemporary relational sensibility that values the intersubjective engagement of analyst and patient and the enactment of dissociated and unformulated states, together with the concepts of regression and the unobtrusive analyst central to the work of the British independent analysts, with a special focus on Michael and Enid Balint. I stress that in being unobtrusive, the analyst is not neutral or abstinent, but deeply engaged and becomes the analyst the patient needs. A case is offered as an account of analytic work that was enhanced and made possible by my engaged but unobtrusive presence, and the privileging of the patient's own idiom, object relating and early developmental needs. I offer a contemporary rendition of regression that encompasses mutuality, regulation and accompaniment. I suggest a concept of “benign regressive mutual regulation” and outline ...

In this article, I offer a concept of therapeutic action that I call “the flow of enactive engagement.” I advance the idea that this flow of enactive engagement is the fulcrum of a contemporary psychoanalytic treatment, just as free association was once to classical psychoanalysis. Analyst and analysand live within the field of the treatment that is created by the two participants but is greater than the sum of its parts. Just as Freud saw free association as the road to psychoanalytic cure and advised the analyst to not intrude on the analysand's associations, I suggest that an unobtrusive Relational analyst can allow the process of the field to emerge and tell its own story. This approach is distinguished from the traditional Relational/Interpersonal approach that sees the constant examination of the therapeutic interaction as the key to therapeutic action. I offer a brief vignette that captures the analytic benefits that accrue when the analyst allows the flow of enactive engagement to unfold.

Much gratitude is offered to Drs. Bach and Bromberg for their rich discussions of the case. Some reflections and final thoughts are gathered. The value of the single case study is underlined. The emphases by Bach and Bromberg on the centrality of trauma, failures in recognition, and the healing fostered by acceptance, consistency, and care in the treatment are highlighted. Bach points to the patient's need to regress and to “float in her own subjectivity” in the treatment, to not be impinged on by another “I” in the room. Bromberg's focus is on the need to accept all of the patient's different self states, including the guardian of the weak vulnerable self. Bach highlights the unbalancing of the analyst's narcissistic equilibrium in enactment and Bromberg emphasizes the importance of real and spontaneous engagement. Both point to how such enactments involve a crucial unthought living through of the central trauma itself in the treatment of such patients. The analyst is both in the enactment and a witness ...

The analysis of Pamela is described, followed by verbatim process of one session. An upbringing of emotional neglect, overstimulation, violent abuse, and lack of boundaries in a family with generations of trauma had left Pamel clinging to a rigid persona built around her abilities to drive herself, to offer herself to others, and to be everything that was required of her in work and social relations. The analysis revealed areas of profound dysregulation and the loss of the sense of herself as alive and inhabiting her own being and body. A consistent holding and containment of these disturbing states was central to the analysis, including, on occasion, the actual holding of Pamela when she was falling apart. A painful enactment of emotional murder in the treatment is described and the sincere and spontaneous response of the analyst that helped transform this potentially destructive moment into one of repair. The session reported occurs as Pamela struggles with the impending termination of this treatment. T...

The author outlines his approach to the theory and practice of group psychotherapy. The emphasis is on therapy by the group rather than therapy in the group. The therapist's task is to help the group itself become the agent of change. The group is conceived as being composed of many multiple selves. The process of group psychotherapy unfolds through enactments that involve the whole group and the group therapist entering into the grip of repetitive and unmentalized self-states. These enactments are resolved when the group members, with the therapist's help and containment, can access alternative self-states that allow for new and unformulated experience to emerge. This dialectical movement between the rigid “familiar chaos” of enactment and the reflective and related working through is compared to the dynamic systems theory articulation of the tension between rigidity and chaos captured by Kauffman's notion that “life exists at the edge of chaos.” A group session is described that involves a painful enact...

In this response I integrate the concept of thirdness into my description of group analysis and advance the concept of being-with-the-group that involves the analyst coconstructing and responding to the rhythmic third of the group. This is a stance that enables the group to be the agent of change and to traverse the phase shifts that move the group through enactments of rigid complementarity to the emergence of thirdness. Accordingly I address the place of transference interpretations in group. I suggest that groups are not destructive by design but that aggression and destructiveness are emergent qualities in groups. I offer a short clinical example of group interaction that illustrates the emerging relational network and rhythm of a group.

The analysis of Peter is described, followed by verbatim process of one session. A life-long retreat into inner fantasy and the experience of himself and others as mere objects had enabled Peter to survive an upbringing in a boundariless, overstimulating, and punitive environment. The analysis focusses on helping this traumatized young man to feel that he can relate to others and maintain a sense of himself as coherent and alive. The session that follows shows how the analyst uses himself, with personal engagement and lively responsiveness, to create a space within which Peter approaches a potential new relationship and begins to consider that it may be possible to remain whole and vibrant while in relation to another.

In this panel, we introduce two new conceptualizations of the analyst’s role and function designed for work with patients outside the reach of customary modes of engagement. Our approaches to the challenges of such patients draw on the insights of object relations theorists but rely on the relational school’s emphasis on the analyst’s subjectivity and differing forms of engagement. We believe that together our approaches contribute to a broadened bandwidth of relational practice.

Grossmark, Wright, Introduction. Wright, Personal Reflections on Hugh Mullan: Existential Group Therapist. Wright, Being Seen, Moved, Disrupted and Reconfigured: Group Leadership from a Relational Perspective. Weinberg, The Group as an Inevitable Relational Field Especially in Times of Conflict. Grossmark, The Edge of Chaos: Enactment, Disruption and Emergence in Group Psychotherapy. Grossmark, Repairing the Irreparable: The Flow of Enactive Engagement in Group Psychotherapy. Billow, Developing Nuclear Ideas. Levine, Progressing While Regressing in Relationships. Fosshage, Use and Impact of Empathic, Other-Centered and Self Listening/Experiencing Perspectives in Analytic Group Psychotherapy. Livingston, Interventions at an Impasse: Vulnerability, the Group Leader's Use of Self, and Sustained Empathic Focus as a Bridge Between Theory and Practice. Flores, Group Psychotherapy & Neuro-Plasticity: An Attachment Theory Perspective. Cohn, Using a Systems Lens to Illuminate the Intersubjective Field in Group. Rizzolo, Rethinking Tavistock: Enactment, the Analytic Third, and the Implications for Group Relations. Segalla, Relational Experiences in Large Group: A Therapeutic and Training Challenge.

A mentally handicapped hostel resident was trained to use the bus. The psychological procedures of modelling, and prompting and fading were used. The rationale and the training are described and subsequently discussed.

Reviews the book, Attachment, play, and authenticity: A Winnicott primer by Steven Tuber (see record 2008-04633-000). This book is a vibrant introduction and explication of one of the most important writers and thinkers in our field. The British pediatrician and psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicott gave us many concepts that have become part of our therapeutic lexicon, such as the "transitional object", "good enough mothering", "holding", "the true and false self", and "the capacity to be alone." However, reading Winnicott's work often proves to be a difficult task; his writing is often idiosyncratic and dense. This is where Steven Tuber has given us a real gift. This clear and clinically relevant book spells out with great clarity and richness the main ideas and structure of Winnicott's contribution and how to apply them to one's clinical thinking and work. The reviewer provides details on his personal experience while reading this book and concludes that this book is essential reading for every psychotherapist, regardless of one's orientation or of the clinical population with which one works. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved).