Publication Announcement by Matt Aibel (USA)

(2022). Psychoanalytic Perspectives, 19(3): 348-364.

In this commentary, Aibel discusses two newly-published 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.” The discussant 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” (Ogden, 2019, p. 661) 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.

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1551806X.2022.2097519

Matt Aibel, LCSW
New York, NY, USA
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