Transcending the caesura

Reverie, dreaming and counter‐dreaming

Datos Bibliográficos

ID8973191
AutoresAvner Bergstein (0000-0003-2301-5902, 14 Nahum Street, Ramat Gan, 52233, Israel, autor de correspondencia)
Año2013
Volumen94
Número4
Páginas621-644
Fecha de publicación2013-03-27
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaThe International Journal of Psychoanalysis (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0020-7578 • E-ISSN: 1745-8315
EditorialTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/1745-8315.12055
PMID23924327
OpenAlexW2065858779
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas22
Referencias citadas11

The author reflects about our capacity to get in touch with primitive, irrepresentable, seemingly unreachable parts of the Self and with the unrepressed unconscious. It is suggested that when the patient's dreaming comes to a halt, or encounters a caesura, the analyst dreams that which the patient cannot. Getting in touch with such primitive mental states and with the origin of the Self is aspired to, not so much for discovering historical truth or recovering unconscious content, as for generating motion between different parts of the psyche. The movement itself is what expands the mind and facilitates psychic growth. Bion's brave and daring notion of 'caesura', suggesting a link between mature emotions and thinking and intra-uterine life, serves as a model for bridging seemingly unbridgeable states of mind. Bion inspires us to 'dream' creatively, to let our minds roam freely, stressing the analyst's speculative imagination and intuition often bordering on hallucination. However, being on the seam between conscious and unconscious, dreaming subverts the psychic equilibrium and poses a threat of catastrophe as a result of the confusion it affords between the psychotic and the non-psychotic parts of the personality. Hence there is a tendency to try and evade it through a more saturated mode of thinking, often relying on external reality. The analyst's dreaming and intuition, perhaps a remnant of intra-uterine life, is elaborated as means of penetrating and transcending the caesura, thus facilitating patient and analyst to bear unbearable states of mind and the painful awareness of the unknowability of the emotional experience. This is illustrated clinically

Aesthetics · Confusion · Dream · Epistemology · Insanity · Intuition · Psyche · Psychic · Psychoanalysis · Unconscious mind · Mental Health and Psychiatry · Paranormal Experiences and Beliefs · Philosophy · Psychology · Psychotherapy Techniques and Applications