James Donnelly, DSW, LCSW

Over the years, the journey towards a growing appreciation of the richness, mystery and power of therapeutic space, has been a trail of images. These images have tended to accumulate and continuously impregnate each other. They have held meanings vital for my sense of self and reality; meanings, however, one can never grasp completely.

The first of these images was the desert. It evolved during the last few years I was in seminary studying for the priesthood with the Maryknoll Fathers. .

The desert was experienced as a void. I clung to this image like a piece of wreckage in a stormy ocean. It surfaced during a time when the familiar meanings of the world of my upbringing were blown away by the winds of personal and intellectual change.

It was a time of awakening to the realization that we create meaning and that meanings, once taken for granted as “given”, are actually created by us. It is hard for me now to recapture the intense anxiety brought on then by this realization.

The desert image held a comprehension that the paradox and dilemma of meaning cannot be resolved. It cannot be resolved – but must be endured if there is to be any hope of the experience of a meaningful life beyond the particular significance we create.

The desert was a place of necessity, not of comfort. It was an awful and, as I look back on it now, a lonely place.

I wrote at the time:

“No name I have can justify my existence…

The desert is where I anxiously await to hear my name called, really … and refrain from creating a context to sooth my aching belly.” (Donnelly, 2006b)

Essentially, the desert was an experience wherein I was alone with the question. It was the desert of Camus and Kierkegaard.

The power of this desert image remains lurking beneath much of my thinking about therapy, even today. It reveals itself in discussions about “the caprice of life” and of the reality of “disruption”. More centrally, it remains as the ever present mandate to allow oneself to endure the experience of being-in-question.

During that ‘desert’ time, I took courses in cultural and physical anthropology at Cornell University. Out of the protective climate of a semi-monastic environment and into the intellectual and social uproar of the Cornell campus of the 60s! … now that was desert with a vengeance!

It was an experience of both turmoil and wonder. It loosened forever the moorings of my cultural past.

Through anthropology and a deeper understanding of the concept of culture, the notion of meanings lost their abstract, somewhat Platonic form. Meanings became for me expressions of a communal conversation between ourselves about ourselves. Meanings were not abstract ideas, but articulations; articulations embodied in our dress, emotion, language, habits, dreams, customs, structures of society, etc. The reality of “meaning” was as a function of our continuous conversations with each other on both a personal and communal level. I saw meanings not as discrete entities but reflections of a process – a process of articulation that was powered by our dealings with each other through our efforts to define ourselves vis a vis one another.

Meanings were expressed, created, questioned or maintained, defended or imposed through our actions towards each other.

The idea of action as conversation and articulation was strongly reinforced as a kind of universal force, by a growing understanding of evolution – particularly through the writings of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1959), a paleontologist and philosopher.

The initial image of the desert was then subsumed into this other emerging image: life as a process of articulation of meanings. My ‘world’ was no longer just ‘there’. It was a world of statements in a conversation in which I participated by every thought, word, feeling, choice and action.  The desert, within this image, was seen as the requirement for risk if, in some manner, action was to be “true”. What “true” meant wasn’t exactly clear. It wore the 60’s mantle of “authentic” or “real” – that is to create meanings that were not maintained at the expense of others.

The images thus far, of the desert, life as processes of articulation, and meanings as their expression, were very early precursors to any notion of a therapeutic space.

Although the desert image, for example, conveyed a sense of personal subjective experience, it was not, in essence, inter-relational or inter-subjective. Meanings, as expressions of an ongoing process of articulation through interaction between us expressed a more political or social reality. They seemed to lack a defined sense of the inter-subjective.

The first clear notion of an inter-subjective space came through exposure to the work of Martin Buber.

Buber’s (1965) concept that there is an in-between space, within which genuine dialogue is possible, provided a deepened understanding of action as speech; he redefined action as a fundamentally inter-subjective occurrence. The first inkling of a therapeutic space emerged as the in-between space required for dialogue. Action deepened from a transactional notion to an action upon one’s self required for dialogue with another. Buber visualized new inclusive meanings being created out of the allowance of an undefined possibility that occurs in the in-between space of genuine dialogue. The action upon one’s self is described by him as meeting the other with the whole of one’s being.

I saw this action as the surrender of one’s partial understanding of self and the other in an act of genuine meeting.

The following paragraphs from I and Thou (1958) are a highly condensed statement of Buber’s philosophy of dialogue. It has been for me a major vehicle and foundation of later psychoanalytic understandings of therapeutic space.

“The Thou MEETS ME THROUGH GRACE – it is not found by seeking.  But my speaking of the primary word to it is an act of my being. It is indeed the act of my being.

The Thou meets me. But I step into direct relation with it. Hence the realization means: being chosen and choosing, suffering and action in one; just as any action of the whole being, which means the suspension of all partial actions and consequently of all sensations of actions grounded only in their particular limitation, is bound to resemble suffering.

The primary word I-Thou can be spoken only with the whole being. Concentration and fusion into the whole being can never take place through my agency, nor can it ever take place without me. I become through my relation to the Thou; as I become I, I say Thou.

All real living is meeting.”

These were the images and concepts with which I entered the study and practice of social work.

Understandably, it took numbers of years to absorb the concepts of relationship and human development required for an informed practice. Initially, as a social work psychotherapist, I was absorbed with understanding human development and therapeutic practice presented primarily in the works of Eric Erickson (1959) and Donald Winnicott. Through Winnicott (1965, 1971), I began to formulate an understanding of the self as a continuous transformation of what he called the primary creative illusion. In other words, the self was an expression of the continuous discovery of meaning – directly related to the quality of inter-subjective experience in development and relationships. Self was not a thing but a process of imagining, the expression of inter-subjective articulation in development and negotiation of life with others.

The de-reification of self was an extremely important notion to fortify a sense of hope; hope reached for – despite the entanglements and mishaps of human relationships. The issue of hope was confronted daily in a psychotherapeutic practice with patients and families sorely assaulted by the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.” In the face of the realities of death, caprice and unchecked injustice, hope could not be equated with wished for outcomes.

The next series of images towards a concept of therapeutic space came directly out of the demands of actual practice, both in medical social work and in psychotherapy. They were images developed and called upon in an effort to define social work and the process of psychotherapy to varied audiences. Such audiences included fellow social workers, other disciplines in the medical settings, as well as clients.

The first series of images that were used to describe the requirements of a therapeutic space arose from the often raw realities of social work practice. These first images developed out of working with people whose lives have been severely disrupted by the caprice of life. The images clearly have their roots in the previous metaphors of the desert and Buber’s in-between. Although not explicitly stated, Winnicott’s descriptions of the therapeutic relation as a “holding environment” within which the transformation of meanings can occur, underpin the frame for the use of these images. In  Society Page, a newsletter for the Metropolitan Chapter of the Society for Social Work Leaders in Health Care, I began to elaborate these images and concepts:

“Social Work sprang forth from the cracks in society. We were a response to people caught and displaced by the dislocations of a society moving too fast for itself.

As practitioners, we are united by the place that called us forth: the boundaries, the borders of conflicting realities in our society where, in countless ways, the cracks still run through the center of the lives of real people – who cannot postpone their pain to wait for resolutions on a grand scale.

We work in the “in-between” spaces of peoples lives; where the fabric of meaning and sense of reality have been torn by some circumstance beyond control; where what is experienced is a gaping hole between reality as one knew it and the need to redefine both one’s self and one’s world.

Social Work has taught us that the human reality is context. We live and move and draw our being from that fabric of mutually defined meanings, rituals, individual and family routines, assumptions and desires that connect us to each other and our sense of being significant and real. The dynamic of context creates our worlds through the ceaseless dialectic of the past and present forces; the dance of transformation or wind of destruction as the fabrics woven from our dreams and desires encounter the un-foretold, the new, and the unwanted.

At the “in-between” place, realities are created and destroyed. In social work, “being where the client is” means: being in the “in-between” place. Here, the bottom line issues are survival, hope and despair. These are issues not solely rooted in the circumstances that lift us up or break us down, but in finding or losing that capacity to redefine ourselves and our world under the impact of those circumstances.

The insight defines our task: to go, however we can, with this person, family or community – to go with them in their quest for this capacity. That is what calls to us from the “in-between”.

The “in-between” is not a place for opinions, answers, or a predetermined ‘mission’. It demands, primarily, a capacity for not knowing; for holding ambiguity, question  and contradiction in one’s confidence of being able to find a way to meaning; meaning which includes the circumstances. It requires faith more than the articulation of belief. It defines compassion: the willingness to suffer with another at the “in-between” place; to reach again to find your own capacity to redefine yourself and your world in the face of these circumstances.

The “in-between” is not for ‘observers’.  It demands that people become a part of your context. It is not for ‘joiners’. The meanings they find will be different from your own. It is not a place of guarantees; your being there, guarantees nothing. Life really does blow some people away.

It is a place you can go with another only by invitation. The heart of it lies in taking the risks necessary to learn where to look for that capacity to seek and find an image of Hope (Donnelly, 1990).”

We see here how the space is presented as an imposed break in a person’s and family’s sense of meaning. The in-between is the gap between one’s former meanings in habits and relationships, and the need to find within the person and those in relation to him or her, some capacity to recreate a sense of meaning again.

The fundamental requirement for a social worker to foster the possibility that the in-between space can be therapeutic is presented as the capacity to allow and endure the discomfort of vulnerability in the face of severe challenges to one’s sense of meaning – and maintain an active presence.

Hope is a grim necessity when the winds of life tear a hole in the fabric of one’s world. Yet it is in facing the reality of this imposed space that the paradox, inherent in all our attempts to discover and validate meaning between us, begins to be apparent. Whether through the caprice of life or the realities of our differences, all meanings between us are validated only in their challenge and the willingness of their surrender.

Another image to capture this reality in all relationships is that of the wheel. In that image, the space was depicted as the hub of the wheel (Donnelly, 2005):

“In this metaphoric wheel there are three spokes:

The first spoke is that of desire and love

The second spoke is that of loss and risk

The third spoke is that of the caprice of life – over which we have little control.

The forces of these spokes are kept in balance by two circles:

the outer rim of the wheel and the inner hub.

The rim of the wheel represents relationship. The dynamics of the three forces described above are experienced and played out in our relationships with each other. Indeed, they are the substance of our relationships.

The inner circle or hub is the force that keeps the wheel working and intact. The inner hub is some perception of the reality of hope.

There are many ways to look for a basis of hope in the dynamics of our relationships.

The possibilities of hope lay in the realization that, in any given moment or circumstance, the reality of our being together is more than our current definitions of experience. We are not trapped by experience.

So, there we have the wheel:

love, risk and caprice working within our relationships revolving around the struggle for the realization of hope.

Hope, the hub of the wheel of relationship, resides in the un-definable core of our being-together and our capacity to discover together new possibilities and new ways of relating to each other.”

The image of the hub of a wheel as the place wherein hope can be discovered has its roots for me in the Tao Te Ching of Lao Tzu (1994):

“Thirty spokes

Share one hub.

Adapt the nothing therein to the purpose in hand, and you will have the use of the cart…

… thus, what we gain is Something, yet it is by virtue of Nothing that this can be put to use.”

This paradox, that for meanings to remain vital, they must risk being lost, is at the heart of the therapeutic power of transference and counter-transference dynamics (Donnelly, 2006). It is the reality that makes possible the psychotherapeutic use of relationship:

“The essence of the therapeutic situation is that it is a human place that honors the space between two people. It is a place where there is a mutual experience and endurance of meanings being brought into question. The heart of this “place” is a structured relationship in which the inherent paradox and dilemmas of all relationships can be experienced, endured and negotiated in a manner that leads to the realization of hope and meaning. Variously defined as a “holding” environment (Winnicott.1965, 1986, 1988), or a “vessel” (Kristeva, 1995; Oliver, 2002), the therapeutic relationship consciously uses the universal dynamic of transference/counter-transference to rediscover the authentic negotiation of mutually meaningful relationships. (Donnelly, 2006) “

Julia Kristeva,(1991, 2002; Oliver, 2002; Sjoholm, 2005) among others, demonstrates that this paradox, symbolically represented by a space, a place lacking definition that must break or challenge meanings as they develop, is central to the developmental achievement of language. In the void of what she calls the semiotic, resides the continuous potential for meanings to recreate.

Christopher Bollas (1999) also reflects on this inherent paradox at the core of the therapeutic process:

“Therapy, however, sustains generative forms of destruction that break disturbances of thought and character.

Our deepest being knows to sustain the elaboration of the self’s idiom – to make one’s music out of life – it must break up hegemonies of content to re-form them, to reshape them into new and differing compositions of meaning. It is a principle that life can only be formed in the birth of new ideas; although new contents (stories, memories, texts) are created, the principle of being a form destines the self to destroy the sanctity of any found idea. The destruction signifies the creative side of riddance, opening up new internal space, available for the re-imagining of reality, unburdened by the accomplishment of any particular wish.

Winnicott’s concept of the true self identifies that side of destructiveness which is creative, which annihilates the held identity of one’s image of the other, in order to create something new.

The burdens of perception can be lifted by the power of imagination. Liberation comes through destruction.”

Psychoanalytic theory, highlighted by the object relations approach, de-reifies the self into a continuous transformation of mutual imagining. This adds such richness to our understanding of the requirements for true dialogue. Dialogue, addressed in Buber’s “in between” space – and which is entered into with “the whole being,” – is the place of hope.  We have seen, through the experience of therapeutic practice, that our very being is meeting-each-other through speech. Therapy, in its essence, is the physical and psychological rediscovery of our being-together (Winnicott, 1965, 1971).

The desert, the original image, lurks always in our practice. It is the void, shriven of any sense of transcendence; it remains so as long as one is denied the gift of being able to be in question with another.

We face each day in our practice, the wounds of those felt forced to imagine in isolation. Often, what is required of us, from those who have stepped into the possibility of the space we offer, is the good sense and patience to wait; to wait and endure the challenge and question of that turbulence and bleakness – until we are invited to be with them.  However “clever” the intervention; however “correct” the interpretation, there is no forced entry here.

The desert is transformed into a therapeutic space only by the willingness of both and the agency of neither.

Whatever we understand about truth, it is maintained, not as much in what we say, but how, in that space between us, we allow ourselves to be spoken.

REFERENCES

Arendt, Hannah (1958). The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Bollas, Christopher (1999). The Mystery of Things. London: Rutledge.

Buber, M. (1958).  I and Thou. Translated by Ronald Gregor Smith. New York: Charles

Scribner’s Sons.

__________. (1965). Between Man and Man. Translated by Ronald Gregor Smith. New

York: Macmillan.

de Chardin, Pierre Teilhard (1959). The Phenomenon of Man. New York: Harper & Row.

Donnelly, J.  (March, 1990). Reaching for the heart of the matter: A meditation on social work in the age of product line management. The Society Page, Metropolitan New York Chapter, Society for Hospital Social Work Directors

___________ (2005). Conditions of Hope: The Ethical Anchor for Psychotherapeutic Practice. New York: South Garden Press.

__________ . (2005b). A Frame for Defining Ethics in Care Planning and Long Term Care: A proactive and integrative perspective. New York: South Garden Press.

__________.  (2006). Difference and Dependence: A dance with many bruised toes. New York: South Garden Press.

__________. (2006b). Soundings: Occasional explorations of social work. New York: South Garden Press.

Erikson, E. (1959). Identity and the Life Cycle. New York: International Universities Press.

Kristeva, J. (1991). Strangers to Ourselves. New York: Columbia University Press.

_________ (2002). The Sense and Non-Sense of Revolt. New York: Columbia University Press.

Lao Tzu. (1994), Tao Te Ching. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

Oliver, K. ed. (2002). The Portable Kristeva. New York: Columbia University Press.

Sjoholm, C. (2005) Kristeva & the Political. New York: Routledge.

Winnicott, D. W. (1965). The Maturational Process and the Facilitating Environment. New York: International University Press.

_________  (1971). Playing and Reality. London: Tavistock Publications.

For thoughts and comments, please e mail to: jdonnellydsw@gmail.com

© 2007James Donnelly, DSW.LCSW

All rights reserved

South Garden Press, New York