TY - JOUR
T1 - A poetics of change
AU - Meares, Russell
AU - Butt, David
AU - Henderson-Brooks, Caroline
AU - Samir, Hany
PY - 2005/9
Y1 - 2005/9
N2 - The progress of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy depends on our capacity to study, in a scientific manner, the process of therapy. Since a study of this kind involves charting the waxing and waning of something as elusive as the sense of personal existence, the task has, in the past, been seen as virtually impossible. However, words, or more particularly, the way words are used, manifest such shifting states. Sophisticated linguistic analyses are available, providing the means to conduct these necessary studies. This article suggests that an ongoing sense of personal existence, which William James called "self," is multilayered, in the manner of the poetic, and that indices of such layering will reflect beneficial change. The description of this zone of experience, which might be called the synchronic, depends on contributions from Marcel Proust, Virginia Woolf, Henri Bergson, and Ferdinand de Saussure. An illustration of the value of a consideration of the minute particulars of the therapeutic conversation is given by means of extracts from therapy sessions seven months apart.
AB - The progress of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy depends on our capacity to study, in a scientific manner, the process of therapy. Since a study of this kind involves charting the waxing and waning of something as elusive as the sense of personal existence, the task has, in the past, been seen as virtually impossible. However, words, or more particularly, the way words are used, manifest such shifting states. Sophisticated linguistic analyses are available, providing the means to conduct these necessary studies. This article suggests that an ongoing sense of personal existence, which William James called "self," is multilayered, in the manner of the poetic, and that indices of such layering will reflect beneficial change. The description of this zone of experience, which might be called the synchronic, depends on contributions from Marcel Proust, Virginia Woolf, Henri Bergson, and Ferdinand de Saussure. An illustration of the value of a consideration of the minute particulars of the therapeutic conversation is given by means of extracts from therapy sessions seven months apart.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=27644502874&partnerID=8YFLogxK
M3 - Review article
AN - SCOPUS:27644502874
SN - 1048-1885
VL - 15
SP - 661
EP - 680
JO - Psychoanalytic Dialogues
JF - Psychoanalytic Dialogues
IS - 5
ER -