In Vitalization in Psychoanalysis, Schwartz Cooney and Sopher
develop and explore the concept of vitalization, generating new
ways of approaching and conceptualizing the psychoanalytic
project.
Vitalization refers to the process between two people that
ignites new experiences and brings withdrawn aspects of the self to
life. This book focuses on how psychoanalysis can be a uniquely
creative encounter that can aid this enlivening internal process,
offering a vibrant new take on the psychotherapeutic project. There
is a long tradition in psychoanalysis that addresses the ways that
the unique subjectivities of each member of the therapeutic dyad
contribute to the repetition of entrenched patterns of relating,
and how the processing of enactments can be reparative. But this
overlap in subjectivities can also bring to life undeveloped
experiences. This focus on generativity and progressive action
represents a significant, cutting-edge turn in psychoanalysis.
Vitalization in Psychoanalysis represents a deep meditation on this
transformational moment in the history of psychoanalytic
thought.
Pulling together work from major writers on vitalization from
all the main psychoanalytic schools of thought, and covering
development, theory and clinical practice, this book will be an
invaluable guide for clinicians of all backgrounds, as well of
students of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis.
Table of Contents
1. Vitalizing Enactment: A Relational Exploration 2. An
Allegiance to Absence: Fidelity to the Internal Void 3.
Activating life in the analytic encounter: the ground of being in
psychoanalysis 4. The Generative Unconscious and the Capacity
to be Fully Alive 5. Between Mythos and Logos: Surrender,
Vitalization and Transformation 6. Vitalizing Engagement: the
Generative Transformation of the Project of Psychoanalysis 7.
Reawakening Desire: Shame, Analytic Love, and Psychoanalytic
Imagination 8. Moving from within the Maternal: The
Choreography of Analytic Eroticism 9. Vitalization as a
Case-Specific Emergent Process 10. Vitality, Attunement and
the Lack Thereof 11. The Analyst As Catalyst: Cultivating
Mind In The Shadow Of Neglect 12. What Makes Time Fly?
Loewald’s Concept of Time and the Resuscitation of Vitality
...
Editor(s)
Biography
Amy Schwartz Cooney, Ph.D., is on faculty at the New York
University (NYU) Post-Doctoral Program in Psychoanalysis and
Psychotherapy. She is on the Board of Directors and is
faculty/supervisor at the National Institute for the
Psychotherapies (NIP) and at the Stephen Mitchell Center for
Relational Studies. She is Joint Editor in Chief of
Psychoanalytic Dialogues and is in private practice in New
York City.
Rachel Sopher is Board Director, Faculty and Supervisor,
National Institute for the Psychotherapies (NIP) Training
Institute; Faculty and Supervisor, National Training Program for
NIP; and Faculty, Stephen Mitchell Center for Relational Studies.
She is Editor-in-Chief of Psychoanalytic Perspectives and
maintains a private practice in New York City.
Reviews
"To live or to exist in less than aliveness or deadness. Such is
the profound question at the heart of contemporary psychoanalytic
theory and treatment and this expertly curated volume brings
together the leading writers on the vitalizing possibilities that
inhere in contemporary psychoanalytic theory and practice. We
encounter patients dominated by states of non-aliveness, absence,
dysregulation, trauma and neglect; and clinicians who utilize
elements of their own presence, reverie, countertransference and
shere courage to facilitate, kindle and ignite life, libido and
vitality. Reading this book is an exercise in parallel process:
each unique chapter will itself inspire, enliven and vitalize the
reader; and will help all clinicians as we struggle with our most
difficult and challenging patients." -Robert Grossmark, Ph.D.,
teaches and supervises at NYU Postdoctoral Program, The National
Institute for the Psychotherapies, The Eastern Group Psychotherapy
Society
"Since the Winnicottian and Bionian ontological revolution in
psychoanalysis, analysts have been more focused on helping our
patients 'to be' than 'to know.' As Winnicott outlined what allows
a person to develop a capacity to be, we began to understand more
about ways that we are also not allowed to be. A focus on deficits
in symbolization, parental absence and deadness have now led to an
increasing interest in experiences and metaphors of vitalization.
This volume is a gift in helping us to understand how profoundly
stark life can 'be' without a sense of aliveness. A talented
collection of analysts from the Independent, Kleinian, and
Relational traditions contribute to our understanding of this
crucial concept in contemporary psychoanalytic theory. These essays
probe intersubjective processes of how vitalizing processes emerge,
are enacted, and integrated. There is also a keen interest in the
kind of object the analyst is becoming in the analytic process, one
who can find new parts of the patient’s inner life and play.
Schwartz Cooney and Sopher’s volume embodies how analytic concepts
such as deadness continue to evolve as key analytic writers bring
to the matter their own struggles with finding vitality inside
their patients and aliveness within the analytic process." - Steven
Cooper, Training and Supervising Analyst at the Boston
Psychoanalytic Society and Institute; Associate Professor of
Psychology at Harvard Medical School and Chief Editor Emeritus at
Psychoanalytic Dialogues
"This is a rich and absorbing book, full of original
descriptions of the void and its place in psychopathology. There
seem to be myriad ways of arriving at empty states, but even more
interestingly, a variety of routes out of them. The clinical
accounts are very moving, and read like chapters out of a terrific
novel: there is endless patience, endurance, stamina, terrible
boredom, suspense and real excitement for patients and analysts
alike. Read and enjoy." - Anne Alvarez, Ph.D., M.A.C.P, Consultant
Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist and teacher and retired
Co-Convener of the Autism Service, Child and Family Dep't.
Tavistock Clinic, London
"This important volume highlights some of the most essential
aspects of human existence: enlivenment, desire, generativity and
hope. In highly creative and sophisticated ways, it brings to life
critical ideas on therapeutic action, transformation, the capacity
for a full existence and the role of psychoanalysis in reviving
vitalization." - Dr. Galit Atlas, faculty member in the
postdoctoral program in psychotherapy and psychoanalysis at New
York University and author of The Enigma of Desire
Transcription:
August Baker:
Welcome to New Books and Psychoanalysis. I'm August Baker,
your host today. Today we are talking about a theoretical book and
one that, when I read it, really affected me emotionally to tell
you the truth. I kind of read it with a lump in my throat and I
talked to someone else who had the same reaction. So it's a pretty
special book. It's called Vitalization in Psychoanalysis:
Perspectives on Being and Becoming, 2021. I'd like to just mention
a couple of reviews before I welcome our guests. Anne Alvarez
reviewing the books said, "The clinical accounts are very moving
and read like chapters out of a terrific novel. There is endless
patience, endurance, stamina, terrible boredom, suspense and real
excitement for patients and analysts alike."
Steven Cooper, kind of sketching the history of psychoanalytic
thought, says "[inaudible 00:01:13] is the kind of cutting edge
right now," and he kind of traces a movement, starting with an
older focus in psychoanalysis on interpretation and knowledge and
then coming to Winnicott and [inaudible 00:01:27] and eventually to
a focus on deficits and symbolization, and now this current work on
experiences and metaphors of vitalization. So our two guests, Dr.
Amy Schwartz Cooney, has a private practice, teaches, writes,
supervises and is joint editor in chief of Psychoanalytic
Dialogues. Welcome, Amy.
Amy Schwartz Cooney:
Thank you.
August Baker:
Rachel Sopher also has a private practice teaches, writes,
supervises and is editor in chief of Psychoanalytic Perspectives.
Welcome, Rachel.
Rachel Sopher:
Thank you.
August Baker:
So the book is Vitalization in Psychoanalysis and I imagine
some of our listeners, all of our listeners, have heard the term
psychoanalysis and probably each of them has their own associations
to it. What are we meaning by psychoanalysis in this context?
Amy Schwartz Cooney:
Rachel, do you want to start?
Rachel Sopher:
Oh, sure. That's such a good question and there's so many
different definitions of what psychoanalysis means and it's changed
so much over the years since the beginning with Freud. Right now,
to me what psychoanalysis means is it's a way of thinking, it's a
way of framing interactions between patient and their analyst and
so for me, it's just a state of mind and a way of thinking. What
about you, Amy? What do you think?
Amy Schwartz Cooney:
I agree with that and I think that it's a project that I
regard to be about growth and transformation. It's an intense
emotional process and because we are both a relational
psychoanalyst, I think I can speak for both of us to say that we do
really feel that the centrality of the relationship in the room
within the patient between their real others, fantasy others, past,
present is at the heart of what is transformative and mutative
about psychoanalysis.
Rachel Sopher:
Absolutely.
August Baker:
Just before we started talking, I mentioned to Rachel that I
had benefited from reading an article she wrote about relational
psychoanalysis with Steven Kuchuk, and you say that there might be
some misunderstanding that relational psychoanalysis is more here
and now secondary process material and that it's not really dealing
with the unconscious and you're saying that's kind of a
mischaracterization.
Rachel Sopher:
Yeah, I think it's kind of a straw man argument that people
use to discredit the relational perspective, relational outlook on
psychoanalysis. It doesn't take away anything. There's nothing lost
in this perspective of looking at the interaction between the two
and that being the way that things change, the transformative
point, is between the couple, patient-therapist couple. It includes
everything and includes unconscious communication and includes the
bodily physical sensations and referee and dreams and all of
that.
August Baker:
So the analyst being more willing to be personally involved
and to work with their subjective reactions?
Amy Schwartz Cooney:
Well, to acknowledge that they are personally involved and
that they are subjective. So relational psychoanalysis just
historically evolved as a critique of the classical model and the
notion of neutrality and abstinence with an acceptance of the
inevitability of the analyst's participation, conscious and
unconscious. I think in these contrast between classical and
relational, like Rachel was saying, that there can be these
reductive straw dogs. Yes, it's true. I think that relational
psychoanalysis maybe runs the risk of being too based in the here
and now and too much about the mutual process in the here and now,
whereas the classical model runs the risk perhaps of being too much
about solely the interpsychic world of the patient, but actually I
think relational analysis comprises both and probably as does the
contemporary Freudian perspective. We just happen not to be as
immersed in that position.
August Baker:
Right. Okay. That actually was my next question. I just
wondered about your own background and what has led to
vitalization. Are there particular theorists who have been
particularly important for both of you in leading to these
ideas?
Amy Schwartz Cooney:
Well, for one, I would say that our conversations, Rachel and
I are good friends and colleagues and for whatever reasons we have
connected around a real interest what psychoanalysis is in terms of
the question of past, present, damage and repair versus creation
and emergence. It's just something that she and I found ourselves
both talking about a lot. I think that I can say that both of us
have kind of an object relational orientation, meaning that we're
very interested in the way people take in their relationships and
live them out. The idea of vitalization really came out of largely
this very vitalizing, exciting relationship that I think that we've
created together.
On a kind of specific level for me in a study group that I was
in, I started to read Anne Alvarez, and while she comes from a
totally different place theoretically in that she's really a
contemporary Kleinian who's integrated beyond and regulation theory
and so forth and works with children, her work is incredibly
progressive and hopeful and geared towards the future even with
patients who have been regarded as the most hopeless and
inaccessible. That's where I kind of hooked into the idea, but it
was really in conversation with Rachel that this all got exciting
and [inaudible 00:08:25] to be.
August Baker:
Great. Rachel, do you have any other ...
Rachel Sopher:
No, I would just totally agree with what Amy said. I remember
we had known each other just over email first, back and forth. When
we met in person, I remember our conversation felt alive right
away. Our first conversation was about Anne Alvarez. I don't know
if you remember that, Amy, and it was just so exciting to meet
someone who I felt so aligned with and was so excited by the same
ideas. Anne Alvarez is very inspiring in that she does look towards
what can be created. There is this kind of hopeful energy to the
writing and to her clinical examples that give you hope for
something new, that something new could and can be created between
two people. That was so enlivening to talk to Amy about that, and I
would say my other influences is I have an object relational tilt.
I would consider myself a relational analyst. I love Winnicott,
Beyond, Thomas Ogden, the goodies, the classic people.
August Baker:
In terms of how you would define vitalization now, we can give
a definition. I thought actually it was quite beautiful in your
introduction. You were writing it in March of 2020, which was very
significant time for all of us, and you wrote about being in that
time but also seeing the springtime in the park. I thought that was
a beautiful metaphor for what vitalization might be. But please
Amy, correct me if I'm wrong or do you have a working definition of
vitalization?
Amy Schwartz Cooney:
Well, I was writing that vitalizing enactment, so I was trying
to sort of reimagine an idea that's very core to relational
psychoanalysis and really many different schools right now, which
is this idea of analyst and patient meeting unconsciously in ways
that are either disassociated or repetitive but are understood to
be pathological and that enactments are meaningful in so far as
they can be worked through, survived and processed. My idea was
that enactments, the coming together of two minds unconsciously,
can also be propulsive and can bring unlived experiences or nascent
experiences. That's my particular spin on the idea and my
particular interest was thinking about the way that we not only
repair the old, but actually come together and create things that
are new for both people in the diad, for the analyst and the
patient.
August Baker:
So true. Yeah, I get this. There's one point you talk about
uncovering and mourning the old versus creating and generating the
new. Another was archeology as an older way of looking at it or
repairing and now we're talking about bringing something to life. I
said a little bit in the beginning about Steven Cooper's view of
how this was the cutting edge. Either one of you, can you talk to
the audience a bit about how this is the cutting edge or how it
fits into the past?
Rachel Sopher:
I guess I could just start out, experientially I've been
finding more ... in my work that I've been finding more patients
who are struggling with deadened experiences inside or pockets of
deadness inside. I don't know that it's been addressed in a
systematic way by psychoanalysis. So first of all, just in terms of
the content, I think that that is something new, but I think also
with relational psychoanalysis and the relational turn, we call it,
there's opportunities for more. There's opportunities for more than
just the archeological model of uncovering the old. There's
something new and alive that is created between two people. So
there's opportunities for so much more that can be created,
generated and like Amy said, it's something new for both patient
and analyst.
Amy Schwartz Cooney:
I would say that bothness is part or is inherent to what is
mutative. Just to extend a bit and address what Steven Cooper I
think was talking about is this kind of question or this place that
the field is at right now, which is thinking about or querying the
relationship between interpretation, symbolization and
nonrepresentational, non symbolized action in the field and kind of
unconscious action, things that occur that aren't about
interpreting the truth of the patient's past experience but
creating something unbidden, as Danielle Stern would say, new and
emergent through the relational field. I think that Steven was kind
of getting at that movement in the field from interpretation to
relationship and even just querying that question about
interpretation, representation, symbolization.
August Baker:
Right. I picked that up a lot and I think my impression is
there are a lot of people who think that psychoanalysis means
learning something about, "Oh this was my childhood and now I'm
this way because of this happened in my childhood." I think you're
saying that's really not a fair characterization of what is going
on. Amy, if we could talk about ... you have a case study of Joel
and you have this term vitalizing enactment, which you already
introduced. I wondered if you could also back up some and tell us
about what an enactment is.
Amy Schwartz Cooney:
The notion of enactment sort of is related to this idea that
we were talking about earlier, about analyst and patient each
bringing unconscious aspects of self into the room and into the
relationship, and an enactment in its most basic way is this
meeting of unconsciousnesses but in ways that have frequently been
construed as repetitive of old problematic patterns or dissociated
traumatic experience. So an enactment, that term means something
that occurs, like an acting in actually as opposed to acting out,
rather than a talking out, thinking out, interpreting it out. It's
an event and usually it's kind of a seismic event where all of a
sudden somebody says or does something or there's a feeling that
had never been there before or suddenly your patient is angry at
you and you had no idea what you were stumbling into or heard or in
love.
Or something big occurs that one or both had no idea was
coming, and then we have frequently thought if we can just make it
through without destroying the entire treatment, we can make sense
of this and make use of it generally through interpretation and
symbolization and move on. An enactment is sort of an unconscious
collision.
August Baker:
Then a vitalizing enactment as opposed to a regular old
enactment?
Amy Schwartz Cooney:
Yeah. Well, big E enactment as Anthony Bass made these
distinction between a big E enactment, which is that huge collision
and a small E, which is just sort of the day to day bumping against
one another-
August Baker:
Sure. Is an enactment something that the analyst does or
something that the patient [inaudible 00:17:08]?
Amy Schwartz Cooney:
It's something that happens in the relationship and it's
frequently thought that it's initiated by the patient, but it can
be initiated by the analyst as well. That's a very relational idea
that the analyst is bringing their own unconscious in all its
complexities into the room and can actually be driving a process at
times without knowing it.
August Baker:
Okay, I understand. So the old model was you're just using
interpretation. That was the 1950s model, right?
Amy Schwartz Cooney:
Well, that's the high water mark, that the analyst is mature
enough and trained enough and expert enough that they can discern
like a surgeon the truth of the patient's experience. They can
interpret that to the patient and that will make the unconscious
conscious and therefore resolve conflict and resolve
psychopathology.
August Baker:
That's a high water mark also because some patients aren't
able to do that or that's not the way they're going to work in the
analysis. Is that right?
Amy Schwartz Cooney:
Yeah, and most people just don't think that way anymore. Don't
think that there is a single truth, don't see the analyst ... don't
see therapeutic action as just around interpretation. Even the
contemporary Freudians don't.
August Baker:
Okay, but I interrupted you. Again, so revitalizing enactment
as opposed to a regular one. Sorry to interrupt in that.
Amy Schwartz Cooney:
Enactments are generally considered to be both ubiquitous and
potentially dangerous and destructive because they come from these
areas of pathological repetition or dissociated trauma. My thought,
and this is related to what Alvarez was talking about, is that we
also meet in areas that are part of the unconscious that isn't just
shards of painful trauma, but are pieces of ourselves that we have
not yet had the chance to fully bring to life, and that sometimes
patient and analyst meet in areas that are embryonic for both of
them. There's something about the meeting that can be vitalizing in
that it brings a new experience to life both in the process of the
treatment and within and between both partners.
August Baker:
Your case study of Joel was just really powerful, I must say.
We don't have time to go through the whole thing, but there were a
couple of ... just to drop in a couple of quotes you said in there,
one I found very interesting was that you did a vital vitalizing
enactment and are reaching out to him. It was very powerful and
afterwards you were thinking, "I don't know what that did. Maybe
nothing. Maybe something big. Maybe ..." But I found it very
interesting, here's a quote. It made a big change and eventually
one of the things that happened was he was talking about ... the
patient, Joel, was talking about how he liked basketball and he
told you the story of a Knicks game, of a player who wasn't usually
playing and came in and did great and the team won and you said, "I
was taken with his recounting of the Knicks game, this story of
redemption and hope, succeeding against all logs and coming to life
when least expected. Although I had many clever connections to
make, I said only, "How amazing, how great."
I just thought that was very interesting and it's an example
of this not necessarily having to put it into words.
Amy Schwartz Cooney:
Yeah, and even feeling, and particularly with this patient,
that words could stop things, could actually deaden things and that
what was so extraordinary about that moment or that session was his
aliveness. It didn't really matter what we were talking about,
although obviously this game itself was such a hope, was such a
wish and such a lovely metaphor for who he might be, but I think
for many analysts when they question is this psychoanalytic or not,
that it's really like the valance or affect, what's happening in
the room rather than the content exactly that feels so
important.
It's like sometimes the valance can be all around the past.
It's not like the past is insignificant at all, but it's just ... I
think what Rachel and I were trying to think about other aspects of
mutative action that are more forward moving and not necessarily
that old equation linking past to present and the causal thing. I
just knew with this patient that something novel was happening and
were I to go back to those sort of traditional, restrained
interpretations that I was taught to make in my own training, I
felt that it would deaden it, that it would stop something quite
wonderful that was happening.
August Baker:
Yeah. I could feel that it was enlivening for him, that it was
great to be able to share that.
Rachel Sopher:
Can I just add something?
August Baker:
Yeah, sure.
Rachel Sopher:
Because I totally agree with everything that Amy's saying. I
think we have these choice points as clinicians where we can either
choose to go into the repetitive old pattern and make connections
that way, which can be extremely useful, or to invite the patient
into something new and the invitation into something new is not
just a new part of themselves, it's an invitation into a new way of
relating with us and it's an invitation for us to also step into
that with them. I think that that's really part of the meaningful
part of this kind of vitalizing enactment is exactly that moment. I
mean, I don't know if you agree, Amy.
Amy Schwartz Cooney:
I totally agree and thank you. I think that was a really
important clarification of what our process is and what the choices
are that we're constantly sifting through.
August Baker:
You had this notion of countertransference urgency. Could you
explain that a little bit?
Amy Schwartz Cooney:
Yeah, I actually took that phrasing from Anne Alvarez because
when she talked about this patient, Robbie, this autistic,
unreachable boy who was slipping away from her before a break, it
was like this heartbreaking vignette in her book. She said that she
reached out to him out of countertransference urgency and looked
him right in the face and was like, "Robbie, Robbie come back to
me." I was so struck with the parallel of my experience where I
felt like I can't let this guy go and just drift away into his
nether zone, and in part because it stirred up something in me
that, as I said, related to my own history and what it's like to
watch a parent disappear.
August Baker:
That was very profound and I also had the sense reading your
case study that he may have been pushing in a way, that you got to
this point where you were really frustrated and you were unable to
reach him and he may have been pushing it there to that point where
you were ... that was just my take on it. I don't know if you felt
that. It's something that both people create.
Amy Schwartz Cooney:
I totally agree with you and I think that there came a point,
I kind of called it the tipping point, where it became
unsustainable and I think that he was unconsciously pushing me and
trying to ... one of the things that we say in psychoanalysis is
sort of the patient teaches you how to be their analyst. I think
that in some way he was doing that. He just kept saying, "No, not
that way, not that way, not that way, not that way," until
something new emerged. Rachel, do you have that sense also that
sometimes in change moments that the patient is in a way leading
you?
Rachel Sopher:
Oh, absolutely. It's almost uncanny the way that ... when you
look backwards, when the enactment happens and you look backwards
at where you've been, you can kind of see the progress of that, the
progression of that towards that moment where I think there are
these little subtle changes or subtle little enactments, like you
said, that happen on the way that lead to this kind of
transformative moment.
August Baker:
I remember hearing Andrea Celenza talk about ... she had this
patient where he got to the point where he was ... I can't remember
exactly what it was, but it was very threatening and she said that
she often tells people about this patient and people say, "Well, of
course you got to that. He was threatening you because he was
communicating such and such," and that's understandable. Her
response was, "They missed the point. He had to get me to the point
where I was rattled."
Rachel Sopher:
Exactly. You know what Winnicott calls these? He says you have
to live an experience together. What Winnicott actually says is the
mother and baby live and experience together and I think that's
what we do as well. We have to live through it with the patient in
order to ... that's the emotional hook. There has to be some kind
of energy behind it, some kind of passion or affect behind it that
drives the movement of the therapy forward.
August Baker:
I also keep imagining when I read about these things that the
patient finds something new. I know you mentioned this in the book,
I couldn't find the quote, but the patient finds something new or
feels, "Geez, I'm alive in a new way now," that's also very painful
when you think about what you've lost. It's not an all pleasant
thing. It's actually pretty painful. Go ahead.
Amy Schwartz Cooney:
I think feeling alive isn't just feeling happy, it's feeling.
I don't know who said this, but it was sometime during the pandemic
when, I don't know, I was reading something or watching something
and it was about what is the purpose of life? The purpose of life
is to live it, not to hide in your room and not to feel nothing.
It's to feel the joy, the sorrow, the pain, the yearning, the
disappointment. That's all vital.
August Baker:
I'll go back to Celenza again, I think says that people tend
to think as you get older you get more dead and she's totally
against that as it is not true. In a way that's another way ... I
don't think this is so pathologizing because you're talking about
people who can get this way just by living, can become numb just by
living or not because anything in particular happened wrong.
Amy Schwartz Cooney:
I think in your case that you were really grappling with very
deadened parts of the patient.
Rachel Sopher:
Yes, absolutely. You're right that it doesn't have to be that
something has gone wrong, but that we could get just numb to
experience and then we have to ... first we have to realize it and
recognize it. I think that that's a big part of the challenge is
recognizing the places where we're numb because we can sleepwalk
through life feeling like everything is fine, but really be
avoiding certain kinds of experiences that bring up painful
emotion, so then we're narrowing our lives down further and further
and further without even realizing it. I think that's so helpful
about analysis is that you start to see the place that ... what's
really missing and the ways that you've kept yourself small and
then missed out on the whole range of experience.
August Baker:
Right. Rachel, it's the same with your case of Jenny. It was
really moving. I'd like to hear you tell the audience some about
this concept of allegiance to absence. I also wanted to just read
one of the things that struck me so much. Now, you, "Imagining with
great clarity an image of Jenny and me sitting together in my
office, an inert body laid out between us, gray corpse like. It
rested on a block with intravenous IV tubes coming out of each of
its arms. One of the IVs ran from the prostate body to Jenny's arm
and the other to mine, each of us connected to this lifeless mass,
infusing it with our own blood, each of us feeding it, sustaining
it, keeping it on life support in some limbo state between life and
death." What a powerful image.
Amy Schwartz Cooney:
Beautiful.
Rachel Sopher:
It was a very powerful image.
August Baker:
For you, I imagine.
Rachel Sopher:
Yeah, it really was. Quite impactful. I guess I'll start with
allegiance to absence [inaudible 00:31:15] the case. It's this idea
that not only do we have these kinds of deadened or absent places
inside, but that we can be attached to them. Let's say we have a
neglectful or absent parent, that's an attachment. There's an
attachment to an absence. There can be defenses against letting go
that. You would think that if there's something absent or missing
or deadened inside, that you would just want to get rid of it. But
that can bring up a lot of fear and like you said, it can bring up
a lot of mourning and grief for what's been missed out on. There's
this allegiance to the absence. There's a holding on, an attachment
to the absence, even if it is kind of a bad object, it carries some
effective resonance for the patient. So that's that idea.
I think that image was so powerful because what it told me was
that both my patient Jenny and I were both committed to keeping
this absence alive between us, this deadened object alive between
us. We were both putting all of our energy, this life blood, into
this because she was so committed to therapy, I was so committed to
her, and yet there was something so dead between us. So this really
brought to light the way we were both in an ongoing enactment of
keeping things dead between us, not allowing things to get too
lively or too exciting between us. So this really brought to light
the way that I had been participating it in it as well and that
freed me actually. Once I realized it, I was scared of something
alive happening between us too. I couldn't analyze that myself and
realize where that came from in myself and then free myself to be
more alive with Jenny.
August Baker:
Again, in your case also, you could see the mutual dance. She
actually has a panic attack, it sounded like, or something like
that in the session, which is going to really put you at the edge
now. This is a volume, of course, and I think one of the things we
haven't touched on is that you have your feelers out there for
what's happening with the other schools of thought in
psychoanalysis and this is a volume that's kind of ... I guess as I
understand it, you've seen movements towards vitalization in lots
of different schools and this volume is trying to collect all of
them together. Could you speak to that and say something about what
the different schools are that are represented?
Amy Schwartz Cooney:
Relational psychoanalysis is a huge umbrella at this point.
Relational psychoanalysis started 40 years ago with Steven Mitchell
in Greenberg and really started with this idea of the critique of
the classical model of the analyst is neutral and so forth, and put
forth the centrality of relationships with real people with our
internal objects. Since then, it has evolved so much and become an
umbrella of schools or thought only united in terms of a belief in
the centrality of relationships. This particular collection was
really calling from many, many different lines of thought that I
feel all fall within the rubric of relational psychoanalysis. Were
we to do the book, a second book, for example, I think it would be
really interesting to go to a Jungian and to go to a contemporary
Freudian to elicit other voices that didn't come in, but these are
all voices that I think fall within the broad umbrella of Big R
relational psychoanalysis. Would you agree, Rachel?
Rachel Sopher:
I would. I think that that's exactly how I feel about it. I
think our intention was really to bring into dialogue different
voices from different backgrounds I think mostly within the
relational scope. There is such a wide variation under the
relational umbrella that it makes for a really interesting kind of
dialogue in my opinion.
August Baker:
Right. No, I felt that also. I guess running out of our 45
minute hour, I go back to your writing this introduction in March
of 2020. Do you have any thoughts generally about vitalization and
this unprecedented time that we're going through?
Amy Schwartz Cooney:
A couple of thoughts. One, certainly that there's a need for
it. I was saying earlier that people have responded to the volume I
think in terms of gravitating towards the hope for hope. I think
that it is a moment where we really do ... what is the Leonard
Cohen ... the crack is where the light comes in there, where we're
really hoping for the light and hoping for something new and
different. I think it's really relevant to going on and living, not
repeating and going back and trying to be the analyst that you were
or the anything that you were before. I think life has changed
seismically, not just because of COVID but I think obviously
because of George Floyd and race and the white awakening long
overdue, which has also, needless to say, become part of the
psychoanalytic conversation.
One of the things that I'm thinking a lot about is how to
translate these ideas around vitalization, which are so deeply
individual into a broader conversation around cultural identity and
subjectivity and race and difference. I think it's relevant. I
haven't yet formulated that, but that's the direction that I want
to go next. Rachel?
August Baker:
Great.
Rachel Sopher:
I agree completely. I think that's so very important. I think
over the past couple of years we've been fighting to stay alive
physically and psychically. I mean, I think especially psychically,
I mean, in my experience it's been hard to stay alive to what's
happening because it's been so chaotic, so difficult, so filled
with grief. I really feel like vitalization is a very important
emergent topic right now in the midst of all of that. I think it's
also important in the midst of this time when we have to fight to
be in relationship with each other, to feel our connections that
felt taken for granted before this and now we have to actually
intentionally reach out to people and make plans and see each other
over Zoom. It can be harder to feel those alive connections with
one another, so I think we have to do that much more to stay alive
right now.
August Baker:
Also politically, it just seemed that it was taken for granted
that there was a mutual ...
Amy Schwartz Cooney:
Absolutely.
August Baker:
Or in retrospect, it seems like there was a mutual respect and
now there's like, "No, we don't care about ... we're fine with just
not talking."
Amy Schwartz Cooney:
Isn't it so disheartening? It really is.
August Baker:
Yeah. Well, unfortunately we're out of time, but I really
appreciate you guys, y'all, talking with me today. Thank you so
much.
Rachel Sopher:
It's been such a pleasure. Thank you.
Amy Schwartz Cooney:
Yeah. It's been vitalizing. It really is and we both so
appreciate your interest in the book and in these ideas. The book
brings us joy and also makes it feel alive because in the midst of
all the horror and trauma, sometimes you can feel like these ideas
are so meaningless, so we really appreciate it.
August Baker:
Yeah, it was amazing. I was just sort of, "Here's a book.
Okay, I'll read it," and then it really affected me very strongly,
so thank you.