Medio-Passive Agency in Psychoanalysis

Responding to Hopelessness and Despair in the Therapeutic Relationship

Bibliographic Data

ID21630268
AuthorsChristian Sell (0000-0002-8460-3946, International Psychoanalytic University Berlin, Berlin, Germany, corresponding author)
Year2022
Volume32
Issue4
Pages353-368
Publication date2022-07-04
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenuePsychoanalytic Dialogues (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1048-1885 • E-ISSN: 1940-9222
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/10481885.2022.2082251
OpenAlexW4297097032
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited23

This essay investigates the role of medio-passive agency in how psychoanalysts can respond to hopelessness and despair in the therapeutic relationship. We can reconstruct from Lear’s study on radical hope a mutually constitutive interplay between hope and creativity. The agency exercised in hope and creativity is medio-passive: the clinical agent incorporates an experience of powerlessness into her response to an ongoing internal process, she lets go. With Winnicott and Bion, this letting go can further be traced as grounded in faith – in an unconscious commitment to the continuous possibility of the good. When patients are incapable of standing in faith, the analyst can make her own faith accessible to them. This process is introduced here as relational medio-passivity and illustrated through clinical material

Creativity · Epistemology · Faith · Passivity · Psychoanalysis · Psychotherapist · Sociology · Unconscious mind · Mental Health and Psychiatry · Philosophy · Psychology · Psychotherapy Techniques and Applications · Social Psychology · Transactional Analysis in Psychotherapy

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