Unformulated Experience: From Dissociation to Imagination in Psychoanalysis

311 Pages·2002·123.989 MB·English

by  Donnel Stern

RELA TIONAL PERSPECTIVES BOOK SERIES
STEPHEN A. MITCHELL AND LEWIS ARON
Series Editors
Volume 1
Rita Wiley McCleary
Conversing with Uncertainty: Practicing Psychotherapy in a Hospital Setting
Volume 2
Charles Spezzano
Affect in Psychoanalysis: A Clinical Synthesis
Volume 3
Neil Altman
The Analyst in the Inner City: Race, Class, and Culture Through a
Psychoanalytic Lens
Volume 4
Lewis Aron
A Meeting of Minds: Mutuality in Psychoanalysis
Volume 5
Joyce A. Slochower
Holding and Psychoanalysis: A Relational Perspective
Volume 6
Barbara Gerson, editor
The Therapist as a Person: Life Crises, Life Choices, Life Experiences, and
Their Effects on Treatment
Volume 7
Charles Spezzano and Gerald J. Gargiulo, editors
Soul on the Couch:
Spirituality, Religion, and Morality in Contemporary Psychoanalysis
VolumeS
Donnel B. Stern
Unformulated Experience:
From Dissociation to Imagination in Psychoanalysis
Volume 9
Stephen A. Mitchell
Influence and Autonomy in Psychoanalysis
In Preparation
Karen J. Maroda Stuart A. Pizer
Surrender and Transformation: Negotiation ofP aradox in
Mutuality in Relational Analysis Psychoanalysis
Lewis Aron and Frances Sommer Peter Shabad
Anderson, editors The Echo ofI nner Truth:
Relational Perspectives on the Body A Psychoanalytic-Existential
Synthesis
Emmanuel Ghent
Process and Paradox
Copyrighted Material
Unformulated Experience
From Dissociation to Imagination
in Psychoanalysis
Donne} B. Stern
~
THE ANALYTIC PRESS
1997 Hillsdale, NJ london
Copyrighted Material
© 2003 by The Analytic Press, Inc., Publishers
First paperback printing 2003
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced
in any form: by photostat, microform, electronic retrieval
system, or any other means, without the prior written
permission of the publisher.
Published by The Analytic Press, Inc.
101 West Street, Hillsdale, NJ 07642
www.analyticpress.com
Earlier versions of several chapters appeared in
Contemporary Psychoanalysis. Chapters 2, 3, and 4 are
revised and expanded versions of "Unformulated Experience"
(1983) 19:71-79. A version of chapter 10 was published as
"The Analyst's Unformulated Experience of the Patient"
(1989) 25:1-33. Chapter 11 is a version of "A Philosophy for
the Embedded Analyst: (1991) 27:51-80. an earlier version of
Chapter 12 appeared as "Courting Surprise" (1990) 26:452-
478.
"Good Form" from The Things They Carried. © 1990 by Tim
OBrien. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Co.,
Seymour Lawrence. All Rights Reserved.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Stern, Donne! B.
Unformulated experience: from dissociation to imagination
In psychoanalysis I Donnel B. Stem
p. cm. - (Relational perspectives book series; v. 8)
Indudes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-88163-405-0
1. Psychoanalysis 2. Consciousness 3.
Subconsciousness. 4. Imagination I. Title. II. Series.
BF175.3665 2003
150.18'5--dc21
97-25923
CIP
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3
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Contents
Preface Xl
Acknowledgments xv
Part I. Experience Fonnulated and Unfonnulated
1 The Given and the Made: A Constructivist View 3
2 Unformulated Experience: An Introduction 33
3 Familiar Chaos: Unformulated
Experience as Defense 51
4 Creative Disorder and Unbidden Perceptions:
Unformulated Experience as Possibility 65
Part II. Reconsidering Self-Deception:
Toward a Theory of Dissociation
5 Imagination and Creative Speech:
Thoughts on Dissociation and Formulation 85
6 Not-Spelling-Out: Dissociation in the
Strong Sense 113
7 Narrative Rigidity: Dissociation in the
Weak Sense 129
ix
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x Contents
8 The Problem of the Private Self: Unformulated
Experience, the Interpersonal Field, and
Multiplicity 147
Part III. Unformulated Experience in the
Work of the Analyst
9 Interpretation and Subjectivity:
A Phenomenology of Resistance 163
10 The Analyst's Unformulated
Experience of the Patient 185
11 Gadamer's Hermeneutics: A Philosophy
for the Embedded Analyst 203
12 Courting Surprise: Unbidden Perceptions in
Clinical Practice 235
Notes 257
References 267
Index 279
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For Kathe
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[T] here is in human existence a principle of indeterminacy,
and this indeterminacy is not only for us, it does not stem from
some imperfection of our knowledge, and we must not imagine
that any God could sound our hearts and minds and determine
what we owe to nature and what to freedom. Existence is inde
terminate in itself, by reason of its fundamental structure, and
in so far as it is the very process whereby the hitherto meaning
less takes on meaning ...
-Maurice Merleau-Ponty
The Phenomenology of Perception
It is when working on movements which are still irresolute,
unstilled, which may not either be called diversions or laws,
works of art or theorems, movements which, when completed,
lose their likeness to each other, that the operations of the
mind can be of use to us.
-Paul Valery,
"Introduction to the Method
of Leonardo da Vinci"
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