I Don’t Understand (Why Scrutinize the Inscrutable When We Can Un-Understand and Not-Know?)

Abstract

The author discusses a pair of articles exploring non-interpretative aspects of contemporary psychoanalytic work, Ofra Shapira-Berman’s “When Should We Not Interpret: The Analyst’s Transformative Act as a Vital Contribution to the Patient’s Sense of Being Real and Alive” and Bnaya Amid and Eytan Bachar’s “At-one-ment: Beyond Transference and Countertransference.” Aibel notes that these authors join a number of contemporary analysts exploring and codifying a shift in thinking about therapeutic action, which Ogden has described as a move from the epistemological to the ontological, from knowledge and understanding to experiencing and becoming. Among analysts of multiple theoretical orientations, a process “allowing the patient the experience of creatively discovering meaning for himself, and in that state of being, becoming more fully alive” today takes precedence over sharing insight. Abdicating a stance of knowledge about the unconscious in favor of co-creating moments of affective meeting is seen as central to facilitating clinical growth.