Professional group study & Consultation

keeping ourselves alive & Engaged in depth work

June 2021 Theme:

Countertransference – A Tool For Transformative Process

READINGS 

    • INTIMACY & SEPARATENESS CHAPTER 6 – ‘The Patient’s Psychic Growth’ – pages 60-72.   CHAPTER 7 – ‘The Analyst’s Fears’ – pages 73-84.
    • SELF EXAMINATION CHAPTER 4 – ‘Failure’ – pages 49-61.  CHAPTER 6 – “The Therapist’s Body at Work’ – pages 81-96.
    • PSYCHIATRIC DIAGNOSIS  – ‘Projective Idenitification’ – pages 114-115

    • SOMATIC EXPERIENCE – CHAPTER 6 – ‘Traces of the Other’ – pages 82 – 84.

    BOOK CHAPTERS 

    Highlighted, Underlined & Scanned PDFs

    Google Docs

    Follow Up Question – What Is My Job Description?

    “Even though client and therapist might throw light on a symptom or a character issue, it has to be enacted in the relationship with the therapist for it to become transformed.

     

    The therapist has to become a part of the problem before he or she can become a part of the cure…the combination of the experienced and the thought has transformative potential.”
    Christopher Bollas

    THOUGHTS ON ACTIVE WITNESSING

    When we, as the therapist, insist on our own presence being able to exist alongside another’s, we show how ‘staying through the midst of all that happens’ is an essential skill, as well as a tool for transforming a person’s narrative. 

    As the therapist, we cannot afford to take this skill for granted. We must appreciate that many people have been deprived of this level of accompaniment, and as a result, they are likely to resist it to the exact degree that they desire and long for it.

    A Chickpea leaps almost over the rim

    Of the pot

    Where it is being boiled.

    Why are you doing this to me?”

    The cook knocks it down with the ladle.

    “Don’t you try to jump out.

    You think I’m torturing you;

    I’m giving you flavor,

    So you can mix with spices and rice

    And be the lovely vitality

    Of a human being.

     

    Remember when you drank

    Rain in the garden?

    That was for this.”

    Grace first.  Sexual pleasure,

    Then a boiling new life begins,

    And the Friend has something

    Good to eat.

     ~ ~ ~

    Eventually

    The chickpea will say to the cook,

    “Boil me some more.

    Hit me with the skimming spoon.

    I can’t do this by myself…

    You’re my cook, my driver,

    My way into existence.

    I love your cooking.”

                                                                          -Rumi