Tag: transitional object

Working in Psychological space Part I: Using the intersubjective field to access, decode and understand what lies beneath

This column also appears in the online edition of the March-April, 2010 issue of  The Therapist Magazine, the publication of the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists.

Abstract:

Adapted from a presentation to the CAMFT Orange County chapter, this first in a three-part series examines the ways applied contemporary psychoanalytic theory, particularly Intersubjective Systems Theory, with its focus on recognition and mutuality, has refined and expanded our understanding of mental processes and clinical interaction, modifying therapeutic dynamics in ways that promote therapist-client resonance.  Exploring developmental factors and transitional space, the origins of creativity and an expanded definition of the unconscious to include unformulated experience, readers will begin to think innovatively about the shared psychological space in which we work. Continue reading “Working in Psychological space Part I: Using the intersubjective field to access, decode and understand what lies beneath”

The Origins of Culture

This column also appears in the Orange County Register.

Once upon a time when the young woman who would become me was a freshman at Cal Berkeley studying French, art history, anthropology, mythology, literature and on weekends, beer and poetic boys with long hair, she was lucky enough to get into a very crowded physical anthropology class taught by a professorial luminary whose name, almost four decades later, I can no longer recall. Continue reading “The Origins of Culture”