Levenson E.A., Slomowitz A. Interpersonal psychoanalysis and the enigma of consciousness

Routledge, 2018. — 345 p. — (Psychoanalysis in a new key book series 38). — ISBN: 9781138692404, 1138692409, 9781138692411, 1138692417.This book explores how the rational algorithm of psychoanalytic engagement and the mysterious flows of consciousness interact; this has traditionally been thought of as dialectical, an unresolvable duality in psycho analytic practice. Analysts move back and forth between the two erspectives, rather like a gestalt leap, finding themselves listening either to the “interpersonal” or to the “intrapsychic” in what feels like a self-state leap. But the interpersonal is not in dialectical opposition to the intra psychic; rather a manifestation of it, a subset. The chapters pick up from the themes xplored in The Purloined Self, shifting the emphasis from the interpersonal
field to the exploration of the enigma of the flow of con sciousness that underlies the therapeutic process. This is not the Freudian Unconscious nor the consciousness of awareness, but the mysteri ous Jamesian matrix of being. Any effort at influence provokes resistance and refusal by the patient. Permitted a “working space,” the patient ultimately cures herself. How that happens is a mystery wrapped up in the greater mys tery of unconscious process, which in turn is wrapped into the great est philosophical and neurological enigma of all—the nature of consciousness.