Presented at the 2016 Kristeva Circle Conference

Stockholm, Sweden

In memory of James Grotstein, MD

“Experience soon showed that the attitude which the analytic physician could most advantageously adopt was to surrender himself to his own unconscious mental activity, in a state of evenly suspended attention, to avoid so far as possible reflection and the construction of conscious expectations, not to try to fix anything he heard in his memory, and by these means to catch the drift of the patient’s unconscious with his own unconscious.”

Sigmund Freud, 1923

Two Encyclopedia Articles

Standard Edition, XVIII

pp. 238-239

Part I   Introduction

I have been a clinical social worker practicing psychotherapy for over 30 years.  For most of these years, the inspiration and bedrock for my understanding the heart of therapeutic practice, both in attitude and technique, came from the writings of Martin Buber, Donald Winnicott and Eric Erickson. That was until about 10 years ago when I came across an article on Psychoanalysis and Freedom published in June of 1998 by Julia Kristeva.

That was the beginning of an adventure that continues to this day.

For several years following, I was intensely engaged with both Kristeva’s work and that of Hannah Arendt to whom Kristeva introduced me. It is an engagement that continues. It was also through Kristeva that I came to study the work of Bion. Fortunately through these efforts, I had correspondence with Julia Kristeva. She has been very supportive of my endeavors to understand her work, as well as pursuing my own explorations about the process of therapy.

Kristeva’s post-modern dissolution of the silos of separate disciplines makes her work both exciting and challenging. It encouraged my attempts to integrate my own background in philosophy with the heart of the psychotherapeutic process.

This presentation, Psychoanalytic Insight and A Philosophy of Existence, is an attempt to explore a philosophy of existence that could be integral to Kristeva’s, Winnicott’s and Bion’s understanding of development of the self and the therapeutic experience.

Key concepts from Kristeva infuse this essay. Her conception of heterogeneity or discontinuity between the semiotic/biological and the symbolic/meaning in the process of signification is primary.  Closely allied is the term chora, borrowed from Plato’s Timaeus, to describe a receptacle or space of creative motility and paradox – a dynamic sourcing the capacity for open and meaningful language.  Central also is the de-reification of the self, defined as process-in-trial.

From Winnicott are his anchoring the development of the self through his concepts of the primary creative illusion, our innate capacity to imagine, and psychological development rooted in the mutuality of environment and maturation. These are also essential to this presentation.

The philosophical premise presented here is based on a concept of existence defined as possibility-for-relation. This notion was formulated while trying to understand Bion’s use of Plato’s concept of Form in his effort to link philosophy with psychological development and the therapeutic process. This essay’s formulation on the nature of existence reflects the philosophical influences of Alfred North Whitehead, Martin Buber, Susanne Langer, Pierre Tielhard de Chardin and Lao Tzu as well Julia Kristeva.

So defined as possibility-for-relation, the nature of existence holds within it the inherent paradox of being sustaining, unstable and incomplete. Kristeva’s concepts of heterogeneity and chora were key in capturing this paradox of sustenance and instability. They provide the basis of elaborating the concepts of desire, will, word and language within this frame for existence as possibility-for-relation.

The radical Freudian insight into the power of free association, freely floating attention, and the concepts of transference and countertransference are examined in terms of the above philosophy of existence. Freudian insight, as explored in the writings of Kristeva, Winnicott and Bion, is seen in this essay as rooted in the fundamental nature of existence and the human experience of its inherent dilemmas.

This frame is used to apply this philosophy of existence to the psychoanalytic notions of narcissism, differentiation, and the inherently contextual and transformative reality of the developing self. The Oedipal myth is revisited and a somewhat different emphasis suggested.

The above exploration further considers implications for the meaning of “therapeutic” in all relationships. Strongly influenced by Kristeva’s, Winnicott’s and Bion’s emphasis on the essential requirement of an existential faith in facing the paradoxes of life and treatment, the essay concludes with an assertion of compassion as the authentic expression of the trial of the transforming self-in-process

The choice of an essay format is used to convey the intensely personal exploration of the requirement for an undefined faith at the root of an authentic therapeutic experience. It is the unfolding of an internal dialogue over many years with the writings of Bion, Kristeva and Winnicott.

The impetus to attempt this essay is the direct result of e-mail correspondence with James Grotstein, author, psychoanalyst and personal friend of Wilfred Bion. We corresponded over a period of several months before his death. His kindness and generosity released within me a freedom of thought that never would have come to this fruition without the privilege of meeting him.

Throughout this meditative essay, I imagined myself in the presence of these mentors who have so impacted on my life and my work. I wrote with them not directly about them, in an attempt to articulate their influence on my own understanding of life and my work as a therapist.

As an exploratory essay of my own thinking, there are no citations throughout the text. Attribution and reference for this exploration is via an autobiographical reference at the end of the essay.

Part II   Reflections on existence

Premise

Things exist. Since things actually exist, the possibility for things to exist has always been present. Possibility is, has always been, and will be present – beneath and within time, between any moments of time.

All that exists, exists only in and through relation. The condition of existence is relation. Whatever singularity may mean, its reality is only within the existential reality of relation.

Since things exist only in and through relation:

Possibility exists only as possibility-for-relation.

Existence can be framed as possibility-for-relation – beneath and within time, between any moments of time. Existence, understood in terms of possibility, is therefore inherently sustaining, inherently unstable, inherently incomplete.

Elaboration

Given the intrinsically relational quality of existence, any form or pattern is therefore framed as an interacting dynamic of mutually contextual relations. The realization of any form or gestalt of relationships, micro or macro, can be understood as the meeting of possibility-for-relation within the inherent instability in conditions of specific circumstance. All relations, therefore, are inherently mutual, contextual and exist only as a function of dynamic relation within all other relations that exist, have existed and could possibly exist. All forms, therefore, are essentially permeable boundaries of processing events.

All relations related to and through existence as possibility-for-relation house an inherent incompleteness and instability – an undefined, unrelenting dynamic presence of incompleteness and lack.

This unrelenting paradox of instability, incompleteness and sustenance simultaneously supports and challenges all existing forms. An unstable-sustaining sea of yet to be defined possibility-for-relation supports and challenges every form or complex relation of forms.

Possibility-for-relation is evident only in its manifestations and through challenges to existing forms. In itself it is essentially and by definition, unknowable.

Drive and Desire

All tendency, attraction, want and desire are the manifestation of the unrelenting reach for yet to be defined possibility-for-relation. All forms or complex of forms hold within them something analogous to anticipation. Anticipation arises from the incompleteness, instability and challenge to existing forms reaching for yet to be discovered possibilities for relation.

Since nothing exists outside of relation, all anticipation is inherently contextual, interactive and mutual. The anticipation of possibility is the mutual anticipation for meeting, discovery and engagement. The interplay of mutual anticipation in any field of relations requires some criteria for exploring yet to be defined possibilities. Such criteria will require some manner of addressing the balance between instability, incompleteness and sustenance inherent in any possibility. Such criteria address the reality of uncertainty, instability, risk and lack.

As any form or complex of forms approaches consciousness, this mutual capacity for anticipation is manifest as an innate capacity to imagine – which establishes the capacity for identity. The capacity to imagine and create identity is contextual and is actualized within a field of inherently mutual identity relationships.

Will and Articulation

Out of the relational interplay of imagination and selection arises the phenomenon of will.

Will is the capacity to allow or disallow the instability, incompleteness and sustenance of possibility.

This frame for existence implies an inherently contextual process, the core of which is the instability/uncertainty/sustenance of possibility. It is a process of risk, presence and discovery – a process with no predetermined or teleological end.

An apt metaphor for this process would be articulation: an articulation of undefined possibilities for relation – directed and sustainable within its inherently contextual mutuality, instability and unpredictability.

As possibility-for-relation, existence can be framed as an unrelenting, indeterminate transformative conversation.

Speech and Word

Any process of interaction and communication within and between forms, and ultimately for speech, is existentially contextual – grounded and challenged in the instability of existence as possibility-for-relation. Word and speech, as one aspect of the capacity to imagine, inquire and converse, is essentially relational, mutual and inherently unstable. Truth and meaning are validated within the instability of word as an instrument of mutually transformative, relational articulation.

Therefore, no word holds meaning in ipse, but only within the shifting contextual anchors for language. The capacity for speech and language is essentially a communal achievement in facing the shifting and undefined possibilities of existence – ecologically, biologically, socially and psychologically.

The Hebrew Dabar (דָבָר) more adequately denotes an understanding of Word as an instrument of articulation for this process than the Greek Logos (λόγος).  Dabar, or Word as event or happening, expresses the instability and element of mutual risk at the heart of speech and Word. Logos denotes structure as a stable underlying form of the nature of things.

Dabar, as event or happening, is an instrument of possibility-for-relation between whole persons. Word, an unstable process, is something that happens to and between us.

Logos, abstract and rational – reflects an isolated aspect of persons. It is part of a fractured concept of the relation of ‘mind’ and ‘body’. It reifies form.

Part III   Psychoanalytic insight

Premise

There are two intrinsically related concepts at the heart of psychoanalytic practice and theory: the Freudian insight and use of free association, freely floating attention, and the phenomenon of transference/countertransference in relationships. Both insights and their elaborations in object relations and theories of projective identification are compatible with the philosophical frame described above, grounding them in an epistemology of possibility.

The Freudian insight captures a universal phenomenon in relationships rooted in the articulating process of existence in all relations.

Elaboration

The directive to allow free association and freely floating attention within the transference experience applies to both client and therapist. It is designed to encourage and allow mutual awareness of uncertainty and risk inherent in the instability, incompleteness and sustenance of possibility – of its inherent move towards the discovery of yet to be defined possibilities in a specific experience of relation and dialogue.

The psychoanalytic experience is a process of mutual risk and transformative deconstruction of selves within a specific relation – a deconstruction that allows both the challenge and support of new possibilities within and between selves.

Transference-countertransference reflects our inherently mutual capacity to imagine. It is a phenomenon that serves as the transformative medium of the articulation process described above.

Self and Intersubjectivity

Self, framed as form (a dynamic of contextual relations), arises out of our inherently mutual capacity to imagine. Self is intrinsically contextual. The transformative mutuality inherent in self is the foundation for inter-subjectivity and the phenomenon of transference-countertransference. Like word and speech, instruments of inter-subjectivity, there is no self in ipse. Self and the field of selves are inherently dynamic, contextual, mutual and unstable. Coming to grips with the risk inherent in that instability is always within the arena of our capacity to imagine, remember, choose and speak together. Language and self, inexorably bound together, provide both boundary and access to the paradoxical complexity of existence framed as possibility- for- relation.

Allowance of access to the yet undefined mutuality of our capacity to imagine, inherent in the risks of the inter-subjectivity of word and self, is the foundation for any effective therapeutic intervention. It occurs through an unfocused receptive attentiveness. It is the allowance of an undefined dynamic space between us where the instability, incompleteness and sustenance of possibility can be held within a state of suspended expectation.

Narcissism and differentiation

Narcissus could only imagine himself as seen by himself and not by others.

Primary narcissism is a foundation for each person’s formation of self. Whatever forms of anticipation precede our capacity to imagine, they are intrinsically relational and mutual. Any sense of unique self is grounded in processes of differentiation and separation within some sentient organic awareness of being in relation. This includes the allowance and tolerance to experience cycles of comfort/discomfort inevitably imbedded within the instability, incompleteness and sustenance of possibility-for-relation.

Differentiation is a function of processes of mutual transformation of selves in context. The core of unique personhood and functional narcissism is anchored in the capacity and relational circumstance that allow and/or disallow mutuality and possibility-for-relation within the specifics of one’s actual lived relational context.

However, a growing awareness of viable uniqueness and sense of personal self requires a loosely but confidentially held realization and appreciation of available dependability within the full relational environment. It is a confidence that is held, not exclusively in any momentary experience, object of attention or specific need, but in an overall sense of a field of mutual participation, of being-in-relation. It is a sense of participating in an imaginary field beyond any specific dyadic encounter. An experienced mutuality, freedom and play within this essential triangular reality of relationships is essential for awareness of and access to the inner and inter-subjective reality of the developing, differentiating self.

Under the impact of the risks and challenges of existence, the capacity to anticipate and imagine cyclically expands and contracts between a general sense of participation and experiences of momentary attention and desire for specific meetings in the field of relations. In sensing a dimly imagined participatory field one is sustained through an overall feeling of mutuality and inter-subjectivity. This enhances a sense of differentiation that incorporates moments of difference, separation and lack within an unspecified possibility of mutuality. Being held within an inter-personal environment that supports an overall sense of differentiation that absorbs experiences of separation and difference means experiencing the inter-subjective environment as predominantly safe, playful, questionable and negotiable.

Trauma

A significant breakdown over time in the dependability of the relational field challenges the capacity to anticipate and imagine possibility-for-relation. Its impact over-focuses on the experiences of loss and abstracts from the wider relational field specific elements, conditions or objects in the environment. The capacity to imagine and grasp availability of a wider sense of less specified mutuality and participation is constricted, weakened or lost. In that circumstance, the action of will as the balance of allowance-disallowance of possibility skews toward a foreclosing disallowance of risk, exploration and presence. Boundaries defining the self become prematurely and rigidly defined and less open to intersubjective possibilities. Access to the inter-subjective reality in relation becomes increasingly conditional. Then, conditions for relation must conform to preset and specified experiences to allow of any subjective sense of participation. The risks of relational dependability are chronically highlighted. Anxiety about separation overrides a realization of one’s capacity for differentiation within a field of possible relations. The experience of relationships holds a diminished sense of safety, play and negotiability.

A wounded capacity to imagine possibilities in the wider field of relations, leads also to an imbalance between more and less present awareness – between the semiotic/symbolic dynamic in the process of signification. With a wounded sense of confidence in the dependability of participation, that balance and ease of fluidity between more or less present awareness becomes increasingly over determined, congealed or frozen. Access to the inner-subjective, as well as the inter-subjective aspect of self is compromised and skewed toward disallowance.

Any possibility for repair and recovery of an expanded sense of inner and inter-subjectivity can only be found within a relation that re-allows reimagining within a mutually endured occurrence of risking undefined possibility within and between them. Essential to that process is a recaptured allowance of fluidity and balance between more and less present awareness, an increased play between the semiotic/symbolic aspects of the process of signification.

The Oedipal myth

From the perspective of existence as possibility-for-relation, the Oedipus tale seems primarily related to the inevitable violation of taboos resulting from the willful disregard of a newborn’s challenge to a predetermined notion of family identity and viability. It seems secondarily, a consequent tale of incest and sexual desire between parent and child.

The myth can be understood as a cautionary tale of the dangers of a narcissistically induced sense of fate or necessity (Aνάγκη) playing havoc within a family that significantly abandoned confidence and faith in the yet to be defined possibility-for-relation inherent in existence. It demonstrates a tragic attempt to fragment the integrity of the three paradoxical aspects of existence – sustenance, incompleteness and instability. The core dilemma of the myth is that between the options for disallowance through control or possession and/or allowance of the discovery of unforeseen possibilities for relation that includes new realities.

Ανάγκη, fate or necessity played out in the myth projects the predestined outcome of the fixed narcissistic premise and its attempts to predefined limits to possibility. Solutions are sought in ‘workarounds’ that lead inevitably to killing or suicide.

Necessity, however, can be released from being defined as Fate and understood in a light more consistent with the philosophical frame presented above – a light at the core and promise of the psychoanalytic premise.

This frame for necessity would address the inevitable alteration and dissolution of any form articulated out of an infinite pool of unformulated possibility. It is an acceptance of the integrity and paradox of all three dimensions of existence so defined: sustaining, incomplete and unstable. It acknowledges the reality of risk and death that doesn’t exclude yet to be discovered possibilities for life, meeting and meaning between us. Such acceptance of necessity and its implicit surrender of a reified self do not tend towards the act or desire for murder or suicide.

This frame for existence also highlights the minimally essential triangular nature of all relations – a reflection and link to the wider field of interactive mutuality within which all relations are both supported and challenged.  Persistent efforts to disallow the unstable aspects of existence paradoxically contribute to a dyadic over focus, reification of selves and shrinking perception of possible sustaining aspects available in the wider field of relationships. Such disallowance wounds the capacity for transformational mutuality and for differentiation within a changing context through imagination, speech and choice.

The vicissitudes of the developing child’s growing awareness of the complexities and availability of the wider relational field of participation are directly linked to the family’s capacity to imagine possibilities yet to be discovered within and beyond its relationships. Such a family climate is linked to its efforts to endure the tension and address without splitting the three disparate aspects of existence.

The vital importance for children to experience more open access and genuine inclusion within their extended families and communities is an ethical imperative.

Part IV  Implications for the meaning of therapeutic in relationships

Embracing the inherent incompleteness, instability and sustenance of possibility in imagination, speech and choice is the sine qua non requirement for any person holding a therapeutic position. It is the ground for open and receptive attentiveness and a faith that nurtures true transformative mutuality in therapeutic practice.

The Freudian insight is into the existential nature of all relationships. As such it cannot be reduced to a method. The fundamental therapeutic requirement for all of us, with regard to our relations with each other and ourselves, is a commitment to struggle with the risks of presence; of allowing the yet to be defined possibility within and between us to occur.

However, the paradox of any therapeutic event is that it is something to be allowed to realize … not something to be done.

In the ordinary course of living, our ongoing sense of a viable self is maintained by will’s balance between allowance/disallowance of the impact upon us of the instability, incompleteness as well as sustenance of possibility; an impact provoked within our interactions with each other, our inner selves and the world. Yet, desire and intention to act therapeutically requires the allowance of the disruptive impact to occur and be experienced – to occur facing the significantly different reality of the ‘other’ within and between us.

Paradoxically, allowance cannot be ‘done’. It occurs within the realization that the experienced difference of this other is inherently linked to the instability of the inner and inter-subjectivity at the core of one’s self. Inherent in this allowance is the loosening of the rigid balance between the more and less present awareness within one’s self and between us. With this allowance and increased freedom of play within the semiotic/symbolic balance in the process of signification comes the rediscovery of our capacity to find and create together restorative new meanings.

Therapeutic Silence

Therapeutic intervention based upon the Freudian insight requires mutual efforts at repair of a wounded capacity for this allowance. This effort of repair necessitates a mutual commitment to speech that faces the risk and discomfort of possibility within actual moments of relationship. It is an effort anchored within the allowance of the analytic silence … in its truest sense: an unspecified attentive surrendering within which we abide together. The essence of this silence is the allowance of an unstable space between us within which new possibilities of meaning can occur.

Our histories, personal, familial and communal, bare witness to wounded commitments to possibility and pandemic surrender to avoidance and fear. The therapeutic encounter is not between one who is wounded and one who is whole. Practicing within that illusion is more harmful than not. Thus the indispensable need to continuously acknowledge one’s own need for the therapeutic experience.

Although embracing the challenges, risks and discomforts of possibility is a requirement for a truly therapeutic attitude, the acknowledgment and awareness of failure to do so is equally required. Therein lies the experience between us of a genuine mutuality.

Humility is not an esoteric virtue. It is a simple acknowledgement of one’s actual situation.

The presence of possibility, of the dynamic yet undefined space between us of genuinely transformative mutuality, is one of tolerance of uncertainty and anticipation of inter-subjective discovery.

Living together in faith and love

Augustine speaks about resolving the dilemmas of will by allowing the operation of will to be transformed into the joy of loving. This jouissance is not without pain; not the pain of masochism but the suffering of transformation of one’s self in the genuine experience of inter-subjectivity.  Such willingness to suffer is the unavoidable effect of a faith in sustenance within the instability and incompleteness of possibility.

It is the suffering of compassion.

References and Bibliography

with autobiographic commentary

“Inevitably, the philosophical ideas of every thinker stem from all he has read as well as all he has heard and seen, and if consequently little of his material is really original, that only lends his doctrines the continuity of an old intellectual heritage. Respectable ancestors, after all are never to be despised.”

Suzanne K. Langer

Philosophy in a New Key

No one thinks in isolation. In addition to Kristeva, Winnicott and Bion, the above essay and formulation is obviously indebted to the thinking of many contributors to psychoanalytic theory and to philosophy. This reference list highlights those who have had a major influence contributing to my arriving at this line of thinking. They demonstrate for me the profound inter-subjectivity of reading and writing across the spaces of time and place.

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

_____________ (1977). The Life of the Mind. New York: Harcourt.

______________( 1996). Love and Saint Augustine. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Hannah Arendt has had a profound influence on my understanding of time and human relationships. Primary has been her insistence on the necessity of a ‘space’ between “speaking beings” that allows the validity of different points of view. She understood man’s capacity for speech and language as the center of his being and defined us as ‘speaking beings’. She struggles with the contradictions and paradoxes of tremendous evil in our times and brings to bear her thorough understanding of the history and philosophy of Western Europe – from the ancient Hebrews and Greeks to the present. Arendt’s concepts of Natality, World, Promise and Forgiveness demonstrate the influences of Augustine and the New Testament on her thinking.

Aristotle (2001). The Basic Works of Aristotle. New York: The Modern Library.

I am directly familiar with Aristotle through his Ethics and Politics. Most of my other understanding of the Aristotelian perspective is through exposure to the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas – almost exclusively through the writing of Jacques Maritain. Primary has been Aristotle’s emphasis upon balance in relationships and the goal of society to serve the Common Good. Of particular importance to me is his concept of man as a political (relational) animal and his wonderful key to all epistemology – his first line of Metaphysics: All men by their nature desire to know – or in a different translation: All knowledge begins with wonder.

Augustine. (1950). The City of God. Translated by M. Dodds. New York: Modern Library.

_________ (1960). The Confessions. Translated by J. K. Ryan. Garden City: Doubleday.

Through reading Augustine, I first came to understand time and history as a function of our narratives. I read him at the same time I was reading in anthropology; out of which I came to this understanding of time: time is self consciousness constituting itself as a story through a multitude of events. Augustine introduced me to a beginning understanding of Self … although I didn’t know it at the time.

Bion, Wilfred R. (1962). Learning from Experience.      London: Heinermann. (Reprinted Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004.)

______________ (1965). Transformations. London: Heinermann. (Reprinted London: Karnac, 1984)

______________ (1970). Attention and Interpretation. London: Travistock. (Reprinted Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004.)

______________ (1998) Two Papers: The Grid and Caesura. London: Karnac.

Bion’s anchoring psychoanalytic understanding within a metaphysical premise through his development of the concept of O, was the primary stimulus and influence in this present formulation. Bion’s work has had a deeply transformative impact upon my understanding of the therapeutic process as linked to the essence of reality. Between struggling to understand his concept of O and his play with Plato’s Forms, I was set upon a significantly different train of thinking. I had already been thinking about possibility as eternal. It was through trying to grasp his use of mathematics and Plato’s philosophy of eternal forms that the idea of possibility as possibility-for-relation came to me. Also transformative are his understanding transference as the necessity to dream, the concept of the Container as the mediator of Form and connection of inter-subjectivity with the normalization of projective identification. Bion’s concept of Caesura occurs to me as another expression of the space of possibility.

Bollas, Christopher (1987). The Shadow of the Object. New York: Columbia University Press.

________________ (1999). The Mystery of Things. London: Rutledge.

________________ (2009). The Evocative Object World. London: Rutledge.

Bollas’ writing has been extremely clear and available for me.  His exploration and clarification of pre-verbal realities of knowledge and relation expressed in his concept of the “un-thought known” has given substance to many of the profound insights of Bion and Winnicott. He has made the essence of Freud’s discovery of the psychoanalytic method and the inter-subjectivity of the unconscious come alive for me as never before.

Buber, Martin. (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.

Buber’s influence on my life and thought has been the most profound of any author I have read. His exploration of the transcendental core of authentic dialogue and the requirement and revelation of the undefined, in-between space has basically carried me through the loss of my traditionally Catholic beliefs. “All real living is meeting” is a mantra that ever sustains me.

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

In a time of great turmoil and coming to grips with the disturbances stirred by my studies in anthropology and evolution, I read de Chardin’s Phenomenon of Man in one day. He injected into the concept of evolution the notion of articulation; through that idea, I found a possibility of faith without reliance on belief. He and Buber opened this possibility for me.

Donnelly, James. (1999). Love and Knowledge: The quest for personal meaning. New York: South Garden Press.

_______________   (2009). Difference and Dependence: A dance with many bruised toes. In Ramifications: A social work exploration of therapeutic space. New York: South Garden Press.

These works present earlier formulations of psychotherapy as an epistemological process, underscoring the key importance of difference as well as the distinction between separation and differentiation. They also place living within the paradox of the caprice of life squarely at the core of the therapeutic endeavor.

Freud, S. (1923). Two encyclopedia articles, Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud XVIII. London: Hogarth Press.

Freud’s fundamental insights: free association, freely floating attention and transference as the first approach to inter-subjective communication. A Taoist gem from an unexpected quarter: the heart of psychoanalytic treatment.

Grotstein, James S. (2007). A Beam of Intense Darkness: Wilfred Bion’s Legacy To Psychoanalysis. London: Karnac.

Without James Grotstein’s knowledge and extreme generosity of spirit, I would never have come to meet Wilfred Bion. My first attempt at reading Bion resulted in my giving away the book!  Grotstein’s writing rescued me from that detour. His e-mail correspondence with me not only helped to clarify Bion’s thinking and his person, but also supported and encouraged my attempts to translate Bion into a more familiar and personal idiom. He embodies and encourages Bion’s directive: to attend to our responses to Bion over struggling to ‘understand’ his theories. Without James Grotstein’s work and generous correspondence, support and encouragement this essay would have remained a ‘yet to be defined possibility.’ This attempt is a direct outcome and expression of my conversations with and deep gratitude toward James Grotstein.

Kristeva, Julia (1982). Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Translated by Leon S. Roudiez. New York: Columbia University Press.

____________(1984). Revolution in Poetic Language.  Translated  by Margaret Waller with an Introduction by Leon S. Roudiez. New York: Columbia University Press.

____________(1987). In the Beginning Was Love: Psychoanalysis and Faith.  Translated by Arthur Goldhammer. New York: Columbia University Press.

____________(1989). Black Sun: Depression and Melancholia. Translated by Leon S Roudiez. New York: Columbia University Press.

____________ (1991). Strangers to Ourselves. Translated by Leon S. Roudiez. New York: Columbia University Press

____________ (2009). This Incredible Need to Believe. Translated by Bie Brahic. New York: Columbia University Press

Julia Kristeva’s writing and generosity of response to me have both encouraged me and forced me to think more deeply. The variety and depth of vertices she brings to her explorations of psychoanalysis and language is at times overwhelming. Whatever it is, her thinking and writing hold and draw out my desire to understand. Kristeva’s concepts of Heterogeneity and the Chora permeate her writing. They highlight the power in the gap of undefined possibility central to the instability inherent in the acquisition, communal and personal, of language, language that allows genuine meaning and connection to each other. Her concept of Self as process-in-trial is central to the formulation of this essay. She insists upon our embracing the reality of being fully embodied inter-subjective speaking beings – the avoidance of which holds us in the chronic pain of futility. Of all the psychoanalytic authors I am indebted to, Julia Kristeva has the amazing ability to portray unflinchingly the ‘dark side’ within the strongest un-romanticized expression of hope.

Langer, Susanne K. (1979) Philosophy in a New Key: A study in the symbolism of reason, rite and art. Third edition. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

_______________  (1953). Feeling and Form. New York: Charles Schribner’s Sons.

Read during the turmoil of coming to grips with a dramatic shift in my cultural and religious world view, Langer’s work provided a stabilizing introduction to a completely different approach to thinking about meaning.

Lao Tzu (1994). Tao Te Ching. Translated by D. C. Lau. New York: Everyman’s Library.

This work of provocative mystery and wonder remains always at my bedside. Buber and Lao Tzu have and continue to sustain me in my journey from a disrupted Catholic to a person of undefined faith.

Maritain, Jacques (1964). Existence and the Existent. English version by Lewis Galantiere and Gerald B. Phelan. New York: Random House.

Jacques Maritain taught me philosophy and the rigors of philosophical thinking that was thoroughly anchored in personal, social and spiritual reality. Aristotle’s and Thomas Aquinas’ ‘owne sonne’, Martian injected Thomism with a sense of Bergson’s dynamism framing existence as the “exercise of existence”. I read the little paperback of this book and underlined it until the pages were torn through. His work was the thesis for my bachelor degree in philosophy. Through that endeavor, I was taught the patience required to understand another’s thinking

Plato (1984). The Dialogues of Plato, Volume I. Translated by R. E. Allen. New Haven: Yale University Press.

_____(1987). The Republic. Translated by Desmond Lee. London: Penguin Books.

From Plato, through his dialogues of Socrates, I was confirmed in valuing the questioning stance towards life and the power of not knowing. Beyond that, Plato’s distrust of the human body and the body politic led me to appreciate the pain he felt at the failure of Athenian democracy and the execution of Socrates.  Reading Republic and Laws and the development of the myth of the cave that led to his concept of Eternal Forms, I took as his attempts to come to grips with instability inherent in personal and communal life. There is much in Plato I have yet to understand and explore. Whatever ‘Platonic’ sensibility I may have has come to me primarily through Augustine.

Whitehead, Alfred North (1978). Process and Reality. Corrected edition. New York: The Free Press.

The essentialist foundations of training in Thomism being shaken, Whitehead’s process thinking offered the possibilities of a new philosophical home that was compatible with the thinking of Langer and Kristeva.

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

____________ (1971). Playing and Reality. London: Travistock Publications

Donald Winnicott provided the foundation and bedrock of my understanding of psychoanalytic theory and use of it as a therapist. Along with Martin Buber, he has been a mainstay of my personal understanding of a meaningful life. As for a humanistic and available understanding of a person’s development and the essence the therapeutic experience, he is before all and beyond comparison. Winnicott’s concepts of the primary creative illusion, the essential inclusion of the environment of care in development, his concepts of holding, handling and object placing, the developmental importance of the capacity to be alone and the ongoing of being … are all embedded in the presentation of this essay. I, as well as many others I’m sure, have always felt a strong personal affinity with Donald Winnicott.

©  2015 James Donnelly, DSW.LCSW

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South Garden Press, New York

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