Conclusion to the Paper: The analyst’s unique use of mind placed in the service of the patient’s mind–body expression provides the driving force for patients to become more able to access their own unconscious mental functioning, both to understand themselves better and to internalize the mutative facets of the relationship with the analyst. Accordingly, the patient’s development is essentially dependent on the analyst’s use of this function and disturbed by perturbations in it. Consequently, as Loewald (1960) advocated, the analyst must offer a more or less evolved representational level, moving a step beyond the patient’s mental state by offering a different yet experientially appropriate perspective of a new, more “mature” object at a higher level of psychic integration. This requires discipline and faith in interpsychic dialogue in the context of an open, emotionally engaged unconscious participation in the analytic dyad.
In order to access and trust the unconsciously functioning analytic instrument, to secure analytic technique, and to better meet the challenges of our “impossible profession” (Freud 1923) by furthering dialogue among different psychoanalytic cultures—particularly given the somewhat neglected primacy of the Freudian unconscious—analysts are best sustained by maintaining confidence in analysis and its potential usefulness for each unique analytic dyad. Therefore, analysts need to recognize the significance of unconscious communication and to possess a clinical perspective grounded in theory both of unconscious mind and of analytic mind use in order to feel anchored across the spectrum of patients and situations.
The analyst’s more relaxed capacity to traverse this expanse with its inherent dynamic tension necessitates a level of maturity on the analyst’s part whereby analytic mind use can benefit the patient. In closing, I will quote William Wordsworth’s (1807) lyrical words as aptly evocative of
the essence of the analyst’s developed mind use:
More skilful in self-knowledge, even more pure,
As tempted more; more able to endure,
As more exposed to suffering and distress;
Thence, also, more alive to tenderness.
Michael Diamond (2014) ANALYTIC MIND USE AND INTERPSYCHIC COMMUNICATION: DRIVING FORCE IN ANALYTIC TECHNIQUE, PATHWAY TO UNCONSCIOUS MENTAL LIFE, The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, Volume LXXXIII, Number 3, pp. 525-563.
Wednesday, February 25, 2015
Wednesday, February 4, 2015
Shared Realities: Participation Mystique and Beyond - Conclusion
CONCLUSION
The concept of participation mystique has evolved and
expanded in range since C.G. Jung adopted it from Lucien Lévy-Bruhl approximately 100 years ago. The
analyst authors who contributed to this volume have explored the concept from
fresh perspectives. No longer can participation
mystique accurately be utilized as a label to describe the psychological
orientation of ‘primitive’ people or be considered an undeveloped or
non-psychological way of being. When viewed through the perspective offered by
the authors of these chapters, the concept provides a contemporary lens for
perceiving “the sympathy of all things.”[1] Participation mystique is better used to describe the complex mix
of unconscious and implicit connections/influences that exist: between people,
people and animals, people and their environment (including nature), and
sometimes between people and things. Because the nature of participation mystique is complex, it sometimes facilitates the
analytic process and sometimes obstructs – depending upon our response to the
field that has been constellated.
The ongoing developments in quantum physics,
complex systems theory, field theory, and philosophy emphasize the
inter-relationship of all things in ways never imagined several generations
ago. As philosopher Dan Zahavi puts it, “the three regions ‘self ’, ‘others’, and ‘world’ belong together; they
reciprocally illuminate one another, and can only be understood in their
interconnection.”[2] The
conceptual framework created by Jung anticipated the developments of the
intersubjective movement in psychoanalysis.[3] As such, we can think of participation mystique as being almost
synonymous in function with intersubjectivity, but also as a term which moves
beyond the realm of ‘subjectivities’ to include other elements of our
environment and the environment itself. Jung’s concept of participation mystique also includes the influence of the
collective psyche which is not present in intersubjective theories.
The preceding chapters illustrate the current
vitality of the concept. Our desire is that participation
mystique will begin to be seen as a broadly reaching concept – an element
of which can be found in many other analytic terms and experiences. These chapters highlight the importance of
engaging with each other and our environments from the perspective of participation mystique; a perspective
which permits a deeper empathic engagement with our patients and the world to
emerge.
Mark Winborn, PhD, NCPsyA
Editor, Shared Realities
[1] C.G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, 1961,
138. In this passage Jung used this phrase to describe the common foundation of
the collective unconscious but it many ways it better describes the experience
of participation mystique.
[2] Dan Zahavi, “Beyond
Empathy: Phenomenological Approaches to Intersubjectivity,” Journal of
Consciousness Studies 8 (2001): 151–167.
[3]
Intersubjective psychoanalysis emerged, in part, out of the influence of
phenomenological
philosophy.
philosophy.
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