Holding, Listening, and Speaking
Engaging the Unconscious and Inviting Depth in Psychotherapy
Engaging the Unconscious and Inviting Depth in Psychotherapy
Amelio A. D'Onofrio, PhD
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“No one wants to get to know his unconscious and the most convenient plan
is to deny its existence altogether.”
~Sigmund Freud
“The harmony which is hidden
is always stronger than that which is revealed.”
~Heraclitus
is to deny its existence altogether.”
~Sigmund Freud
“The harmony which is hidden
is always stronger than that which is revealed.”
~Heraclitus
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Overview
The Unconscious. What is it? Is it knowable? If so, how does it speak? How does it provide access to the hidden elements of our life patterns and core conflicts? What can it tell us about our suffering? How might we therapists invite it to open itself up and speak in full voice so that its truth can unfold? How, then, do we engage it and decipher its layered meanings and how do we respond so that which has already been known through one’s lived actions can now be formulated and appropriated in new ways? Finally, how do we help our patients move from an alienated or prosthetic identity, one’s fundamental symptom, to a more authentic subjectivity?
In this seminar, we will wrestle with questions such as these as we attempt to build a model of psychotherapy that takes place at the inflection point where patient and therapist meet. To that end, this seminar will focus on expanding the clinician’s capacity for inviting depth into the therapeutic encounter through an examination of the unconscious processes at play in the consulting room. We begin with an overview of the architecture of the unconscious and the nature of its operations. We will then outline how it might communicate, the conditions under which it speaks, what it actually says to the therapist, and finally, we imagine together the possibilities for how the therapist might listen and speak in response. We’ll work to make sense of the derivative, symbolic language the unconscious uses and the wisdom it can offer to inform the healing process.
The goal of the seminar is to help participants cultivate a more refined “inner ear” in listening to the unconscious communication that unfolds intersubjectively. We will explore the implicit, non-conscious processes operating in the moment-to-moment interactions between patient and therapist and help the clinician learn to translate the meaning of those micro-points-of-contact into more reparative interventions. Special emphasis will be placed on the ways we therapists enrich or impoverish the therapeutic space we create and are responsible for managing.
This seminar integrates core insights of psychoanalytic theory with elements of the existential philosophical tradition that honors the ontological dignity of the patient as well as the interstitial nature of therapeutic experience. It is designed to help participants examine both their conceptual and technical assumptions about the nature of the healing process and to develop a more grounded, sophisticated, and gracious approach to their work.
Please join us for a week of stimulating conversation and the exchange of transformative ideas. You'll be challenged and inspired to reexamine your usual ways of working and to deepen your understanding of the therapeutic process.
In this seminar, we will wrestle with questions such as these as we attempt to build a model of psychotherapy that takes place at the inflection point where patient and therapist meet. To that end, this seminar will focus on expanding the clinician’s capacity for inviting depth into the therapeutic encounter through an examination of the unconscious processes at play in the consulting room. We begin with an overview of the architecture of the unconscious and the nature of its operations. We will then outline how it might communicate, the conditions under which it speaks, what it actually says to the therapist, and finally, we imagine together the possibilities for how the therapist might listen and speak in response. We’ll work to make sense of the derivative, symbolic language the unconscious uses and the wisdom it can offer to inform the healing process.
The goal of the seminar is to help participants cultivate a more refined “inner ear” in listening to the unconscious communication that unfolds intersubjectively. We will explore the implicit, non-conscious processes operating in the moment-to-moment interactions between patient and therapist and help the clinician learn to translate the meaning of those micro-points-of-contact into more reparative interventions. Special emphasis will be placed on the ways we therapists enrich or impoverish the therapeutic space we create and are responsible for managing.
This seminar integrates core insights of psychoanalytic theory with elements of the existential philosophical tradition that honors the ontological dignity of the patient as well as the interstitial nature of therapeutic experience. It is designed to help participants examine both their conceptual and technical assumptions about the nature of the healing process and to develop a more grounded, sophisticated, and gracious approach to their work.
Please join us for a week of stimulating conversation and the exchange of transformative ideas. You'll be challenged and inspired to reexamine your usual ways of working and to deepen your understanding of the therapeutic process.
Prologue to the 2019 Seminar
A patient once remarked at the beginning of her treatment, “I’m really good at building narratives, so be careful!” Her exhortation to me was clear: while she was aware of what she knew about herself and could tell that story relatively coherently, there was more to her (and to her suffering) than she was able to access and put into words. Her warning was also a request: she needed me to listen beyond the surface-layer of the story she was able to tell. I needed to listen to and decipher the layered meanings found in and around her words—to the “subtext” of her narrative. Perhaps, she was also suggesting that the “subtext” was actually the real “text” that disclosed the truth of who she was and how she suffered.
In essence, her message to me was “My life cannot be represented through a logical, literal story written in prose. Rather, I am a poem, layered with symbols, metaphors, allusions, and meanings which I myself don’t fully understand. The deepest truths of my traumas and my resulting pain will be communicated only indirectly and obliquely for they are overwhelmingly frightening. And, to really come to know me, you must open yourself up to experiencing me as the enigmatic poem that I am.”
Unconcealing Meaning: Attitude and Technique
The Academy of American Poets tell us that reading poetry well “is part attitude and part technique”. Thus, in considering our approach to a poem, we might ask: what is the attitude with which we bring ourselves to the encounter? Do we approach it with preconceived notions as to meaning and significance? Are we able to embrace ambiguity and live in the not-known? Do we expect to understand the poem on our first encounter with it or can we appreciate that knowing will unfold from how we engage? Do we bring to our reading that sense that the poem’s meaning is more than the sum of its parts and when the words only partially depict an experience, can we imagine the realness of that experience nonetheless? Can we appreciate the need for us to lean into the poem, to work at its completion by meeting it with our own subjectivity?
In terms of technique, do we recognize that in order to decipher the layered meanings of a poem we need to develop an ear for its musical qualities? Are we able to recognize melody, harmony, rhythm and how they enhance meaning or do we let words obscure the music? Are we able to listen beyond our imagination and attune to the poem’s affective tones with our being? Are we able to discern who is speaking, who is spoken, and who the audience is intended to be? Is there an identifiable form and can we tell how that form relates to the poem’s content? And finally, can we tolerate the impossibility of truly understanding the poem in its entirety?
The Unconscious and Its Symbolic Language
In its evolutionary genius, the human psyche has developed into a brilliant poet, and we are the poems it writes. It has developed subtle and sophisticated mechanisms that hide and reveal, that disguise and encode, that sometimes speak directly and at other times speak in incidental and circuitous ways. It wanders and zigzags to protect us from knowing ourselves, for to come face to face with our deeper traumatic and catastrophic truths may leave us undone. Our psyche often ‘resists’ recognizing the truth of painful experience and in its place erects distorted realities that may offer, in the short term, an illusory sense of safety and control. It leads us to dissociate from disruptive and overwhelming inner states and pushes out of awareness that which cannot be contained, felt consciously, or represented in thought and through words.
In essence, her message to me was “My life cannot be represented through a logical, literal story written in prose. Rather, I am a poem, layered with symbols, metaphors, allusions, and meanings which I myself don’t fully understand. The deepest truths of my traumas and my resulting pain will be communicated only indirectly and obliquely for they are overwhelmingly frightening. And, to really come to know me, you must open yourself up to experiencing me as the enigmatic poem that I am.”
Unconcealing Meaning: Attitude and Technique
The Academy of American Poets tell us that reading poetry well “is part attitude and part technique”. Thus, in considering our approach to a poem, we might ask: what is the attitude with which we bring ourselves to the encounter? Do we approach it with preconceived notions as to meaning and significance? Are we able to embrace ambiguity and live in the not-known? Do we expect to understand the poem on our first encounter with it or can we appreciate that knowing will unfold from how we engage? Do we bring to our reading that sense that the poem’s meaning is more than the sum of its parts and when the words only partially depict an experience, can we imagine the realness of that experience nonetheless? Can we appreciate the need for us to lean into the poem, to work at its completion by meeting it with our own subjectivity?
In terms of technique, do we recognize that in order to decipher the layered meanings of a poem we need to develop an ear for its musical qualities? Are we able to recognize melody, harmony, rhythm and how they enhance meaning or do we let words obscure the music? Are we able to listen beyond our imagination and attune to the poem’s affective tones with our being? Are we able to discern who is speaking, who is spoken, and who the audience is intended to be? Is there an identifiable form and can we tell how that form relates to the poem’s content? And finally, can we tolerate the impossibility of truly understanding the poem in its entirety?
The Unconscious and Its Symbolic Language
In its evolutionary genius, the human psyche has developed into a brilliant poet, and we are the poems it writes. It has developed subtle and sophisticated mechanisms that hide and reveal, that disguise and encode, that sometimes speak directly and at other times speak in incidental and circuitous ways. It wanders and zigzags to protect us from knowing ourselves, for to come face to face with our deeper traumatic and catastrophic truths may leave us undone. Our psyche often ‘resists’ recognizing the truth of painful experience and in its place erects distorted realities that may offer, in the short term, an illusory sense of safety and control. It leads us to dissociate from disruptive and overwhelming inner states and pushes out of awareness that which cannot be contained, felt consciously, or represented in thought and through words.
Yet, though out of awareness, our difficult to bear truths, fueled by a singular logic of their own, coalesce into forces that stealthily and artfully shape the patterns of our lives. They express themselves through the maladies of our bodies, through automatic, repetitive, and insistent enactments in our relationships, and through the stories we construct with language about the world and ourselves. Those things that we cannot think and speak about in direct ways—as they are unthinkable and unspeakable—we represent and disclose symbolically. We become the poem. And so, our patients turn to us, their therapists, and charge us with helping them make better sense of the poem that they are and aid them in bringing it more fully to its completion.
Therapeutic Narrative and Derivative Communication
When, in fact, patients are able to put words to their suffering they often offer us two sets of meanings: one, a surface meaning that is clear and comprehensible, and the other, a deeper meaning that is typically presented in disguised or encoded form. This latter form of meaning-filled communication, Freud called ‘derivatives’ of the unconscious. These derivatives emerge in free association when repressed material, which heretofore has been difficult to bear, is ready to be known by the patient in consciousness. Derivatives are expressions of meaning communicated symbolically—through analogy, metaphor or allusion as well as in the formation and structure of one’s symptoms. While these symbolic expressions reference the patient’s ‘outside world,’ they simultaneously communicate something powerful about the patient’s ‘inside world.’
Just as our dreams can be disclosive on multiple levels, the narratives that contain derivatives similarly bridge our two fundamental ways of experiencing reality—the conscious and unconscious—two states of mind that don’t quite speak the same language. In the dream, we know that the latent content tells a different story than the manifest drama we remember. The plots and images can seem bizarre, disjointed, nonsensical. But, upon deeper analysis, we can work to decode the camouflaged messages that arise from the more hidden parts of ourselves—parts that may speak to us about that which we may have neglected in our lives, the conflicts and fears that eat away at us, and the wishes we convince ourselves in waking life that are not ours. These cloaked meanings found in our dreams can also disclose to us our own deep wisdom for making more authentic choices in our lives. Likewise, the stories told to us by patients, also have a surface and depth. In fact, we are encircled by stories in the consulting room—the patient’s, the therapist’s, the stories created together, as well as the missing elements of the stories told. In disguised ways, these stories tell us of the secret fears and threats our patients may experience, the conflicts driving their desires, and they inform us of those inner states not yet tolerable to awareness. In the subtext of the stories they recount to us, patients also share with us their experience of us as their therapists and about our therapeutic efforts. And, along the way, they also offer us unconscious clues as to how we may best help them heal.
The Return to the Unconscious
Situated in a contemporary culture whose ethos seems to discourage inwardness while espousing a view that gives primacy to instrumental reason designed to offer quick fixes to life’s complex problems, the unconscious and its symbolic expressions are often either devalued in their perceptive and communicative potential or ignored altogether. Perhaps, the language of the unconscious has been forgotten because many of us may not have been taught well enough in our training programs how to decipher the “how” and “what” the unconscious communicates, let alone how to engage it therapeutically.
In this seminar, we'll return to the unconscious. We’ll examine the ways in which it communicates, what it actually asks of therapists, and we’ll explore its logic. We’ll work to make sense of the symbolic language it speaks and the wisdom it can offer us to help our patients heal.
We’ll attempt to tackle such questions as: How do we confront the void that exists beneath the lack, loss, and desire our patients bring to the consulting room? How do we make sense of the derivative messages contained in their symptoms, narratives, images, fantasies, and dreams told to us? How do we understand the here-and-now commentaries of the patient’s offerings that may provide insight and guidance on the treatment and on the therapist’s therapeutic qualities? How do we create the kind of therapeutic space that will allow the unconscious to speak in fuller voice, how may we listen in a more generative way to what is offered, and how, in turn, might we therapists speak to it in response? Lastly, how does the unconscious, understood not as a collection of discrete repressions or a seething cauldron of drives but as a structuring activity, help shape our patient’s ontological project of being?
This seminar is designed for individuals who appreciate the power of the latent meanings of patients’ communication and who seek to learn how to more accurately decipher the meaning layers of their patients’ narratives. In being able to better attune to patients’ deeper truths, we will not only be able to provide them a clearer explanation of the sources of their suffering but also, and more importantly, provide them with a new experience of themselves—the foundation for a more enduring transformation.
Finally, while prior knowledge of psychoanalytic/existential concepts would be helpful to participants in navigating the ideas presented in this seminar, we will endeavor to move beyond clinical jargon toward creating an accessible and eminently practical shared understanding.
Please join us for a week of stimulating conversation and the exchange of transformative ideas. You'll be challenged and inspired to reexamine your usual ways of working and to deepen your understanding of the therapeutic process.
Therapeutic Narrative and Derivative Communication
When, in fact, patients are able to put words to their suffering they often offer us two sets of meanings: one, a surface meaning that is clear and comprehensible, and the other, a deeper meaning that is typically presented in disguised or encoded form. This latter form of meaning-filled communication, Freud called ‘derivatives’ of the unconscious. These derivatives emerge in free association when repressed material, which heretofore has been difficult to bear, is ready to be known by the patient in consciousness. Derivatives are expressions of meaning communicated symbolically—through analogy, metaphor or allusion as well as in the formation and structure of one’s symptoms. While these symbolic expressions reference the patient’s ‘outside world,’ they simultaneously communicate something powerful about the patient’s ‘inside world.’
Just as our dreams can be disclosive on multiple levels, the narratives that contain derivatives similarly bridge our two fundamental ways of experiencing reality—the conscious and unconscious—two states of mind that don’t quite speak the same language. In the dream, we know that the latent content tells a different story than the manifest drama we remember. The plots and images can seem bizarre, disjointed, nonsensical. But, upon deeper analysis, we can work to decode the camouflaged messages that arise from the more hidden parts of ourselves—parts that may speak to us about that which we may have neglected in our lives, the conflicts and fears that eat away at us, and the wishes we convince ourselves in waking life that are not ours. These cloaked meanings found in our dreams can also disclose to us our own deep wisdom for making more authentic choices in our lives. Likewise, the stories told to us by patients, also have a surface and depth. In fact, we are encircled by stories in the consulting room—the patient’s, the therapist’s, the stories created together, as well as the missing elements of the stories told. In disguised ways, these stories tell us of the secret fears and threats our patients may experience, the conflicts driving their desires, and they inform us of those inner states not yet tolerable to awareness. In the subtext of the stories they recount to us, patients also share with us their experience of us as their therapists and about our therapeutic efforts. And, along the way, they also offer us unconscious clues as to how we may best help them heal.
The Return to the Unconscious
Situated in a contemporary culture whose ethos seems to discourage inwardness while espousing a view that gives primacy to instrumental reason designed to offer quick fixes to life’s complex problems, the unconscious and its symbolic expressions are often either devalued in their perceptive and communicative potential or ignored altogether. Perhaps, the language of the unconscious has been forgotten because many of us may not have been taught well enough in our training programs how to decipher the “how” and “what” the unconscious communicates, let alone how to engage it therapeutically.
In this seminar, we'll return to the unconscious. We’ll examine the ways in which it communicates, what it actually asks of therapists, and we’ll explore its logic. We’ll work to make sense of the symbolic language it speaks and the wisdom it can offer us to help our patients heal.
We’ll attempt to tackle such questions as: How do we confront the void that exists beneath the lack, loss, and desire our patients bring to the consulting room? How do we make sense of the derivative messages contained in their symptoms, narratives, images, fantasies, and dreams told to us? How do we understand the here-and-now commentaries of the patient’s offerings that may provide insight and guidance on the treatment and on the therapist’s therapeutic qualities? How do we create the kind of therapeutic space that will allow the unconscious to speak in fuller voice, how may we listen in a more generative way to what is offered, and how, in turn, might we therapists speak to it in response? Lastly, how does the unconscious, understood not as a collection of discrete repressions or a seething cauldron of drives but as a structuring activity, help shape our patient’s ontological project of being?
This seminar is designed for individuals who appreciate the power of the latent meanings of patients’ communication and who seek to learn how to more accurately decipher the meaning layers of their patients’ narratives. In being able to better attune to patients’ deeper truths, we will not only be able to provide them a clearer explanation of the sources of their suffering but also, and more importantly, provide them with a new experience of themselves—the foundation for a more enduring transformation.
Finally, while prior knowledge of psychoanalytic/existential concepts would be helpful to participants in navigating the ideas presented in this seminar, we will endeavor to move beyond clinical jargon toward creating an accessible and eminently practical shared understanding.
Please join us for a week of stimulating conversation and the exchange of transformative ideas. You'll be challenged and inspired to reexamine your usual ways of working and to deepen your understanding of the therapeutic process.
Overview of Topics
Monday, July 22, 2019
The Notion of Depth and the Architecture of the Unconscious
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Opening Conversation
“Depth, as opposed to distance from a surface, never implies detachment. Depth brings us into a relationship, whatever the distance involved, with the other, and allows us to ‘feel across’ the intervening space… What produces alienation is not depth, but lack of depth."
~ Iain McGilchrist
“The unconscious is fertile ‘nature,’ ... the identity in which every distinction fades and all things reunite.”
~Philip Rieff
“I believe symbolic language is the one foreign language that each of us must learn."
~Erich Fromm
~ Iain McGilchrist
“The unconscious is fertile ‘nature,’ ... the identity in which every distinction fades and all things reunite.”
~Philip Rieff
“I believe symbolic language is the one foreign language that each of us must learn."
~Erich Fromm
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Themes for the Day
- Overview of the Week
- Guiding Considerations for a Psychotherapy of Depth
- The Architecture and Logic of the Unconscious
- The Symbolic: Symptoms, Enactments, Dreams, Lapses, and Narratives
- Communicative Forms: Derivatives of the Unconscious
- Patient and Therapist Resistance to ‘Knowing’
Tuesday, July 23, 2019
The Therapeutic Hold, Death Anxiety, and the Creation of the Unconscious
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Opening Conversation
“Analysis not only explores what we might believe to be already there
but produces something new that can now write itself."
~Colette Soler
“The setting of analysis reproduces the early and earliest mothering techniques. It invites regression by reason of its reliability."
~Donald Winnicott
“Secured frames, in which all the fundamental, archetypal, deep unconsciously sought and validated ground rules are in place...
offer optimally healing and inherently supportive conditions for a therapeutic experience,
but they also evoke entrapping existential death anxieties."
~Robert Langs
but produces something new that can now write itself."
~Colette Soler
“The setting of analysis reproduces the early and earliest mothering techniques. It invites regression by reason of its reliability."
~Donald Winnicott
“Secured frames, in which all the fundamental, archetypal, deep unconsciously sought and validated ground rules are in place...
offer optimally healing and inherently supportive conditions for a therapeutic experience,
but they also evoke entrapping existential death anxieties."
~Robert Langs
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Themes for the Day
- On Inviting the Unconscious into Being
- The Fundamental Symptom and Its Symptoms
- Trauma, Death, and the Origin of Subjectivity
- Predator, Predatory, and Existential Death Anxiety
- The Architecture of the Therapeutic Space: The Fixed and Intervention Frames
- The Therapeutic Space as Activator for the Unconscious
Optional Tuesday Afternoon Activity
Wednesday, July 24, 2019
Listening: Silence-Primordial Space for Emergence
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Opening Conversation
“Keeping silent authentically is possible only in genuine discoursing. To be able to keep silent,
Dasein must have something to say—that is, it must have at its disposal an authentic and rich disclosedness of itself.”
~Martin Heidegger
“To be in silence with another is to communicate silently with your whole being.”
~ Peter Wilberg
“Silence inspires one to muse.”
~Julia Kristeva
“I keep quiet.”
~Jacques Lacan
Dasein must have something to say—that is, it must have at its disposal an authentic and rich disclosedness of itself.”
~Martin Heidegger
“To be in silence with another is to communicate silently with your whole being.”
~ Peter Wilberg
“Silence inspires one to muse.”
~Julia Kristeva
“I keep quiet.”
~Jacques Lacan
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Themes for the Day
- Deepening the Practice of Listening
- Maieutic Silence: Withholding and Holding-With
- The Clearing: Bearing Ourselves in the Silence
- Silence as the Condition for Unconscious Emergence and Discourse
- Silence and Containment of the Symbolic
- Listening and Speaking In and Through the Silence
Optional Wednesday Afternoon Activities
Thursday, July 25, 2019
Listening and Speaking: From the Ego-Rational to the Generative
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Opening Conversation
“There are surprisingly few good listeners in the psychotherapeutic world…
one of the most important reasons is that we tend to hear everything in relation to ourselves.”
~Bruce Fink
one of the most important reasons is that we tend to hear everything in relation to ourselves.”
~Bruce Fink
“To repeat: the capacity to forget, the ability to eschew desire and understanding,
must be regarded as essential discipline for the psycho-analyst. Failure to practice this discipline will
lead to a steady deterioration in the powers of observation whose maintenance is essential.”
~Wilfred Bion
“There is a listening that works this way: a listening that is responsible for creating what it hears--
a listening, for example, with the power to cause or alleviate the very suffering it hears."
~David Levin
must be regarded as essential discipline for the psycho-analyst. Failure to practice this discipline will
lead to a steady deterioration in the powers of observation whose maintenance is essential.”
~Wilfred Bion
“There is a listening that works this way: a listening that is responsible for creating what it hears--
a listening, for example, with the power to cause or alleviate the very suffering it hears."
~David Levin
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Themes for the Day
- Gellasenheit: Surrender in the Service of Memory, Desire, and More
- Disambiguating the Conscious from the Unconscious Utterance
- How Derivatives of the Unconscious Speak and What They Ask of the Therapist
- The Encounter with Variants of Love and Hate in the Unconscious
- The Patient as Unconscious Supervisor to the Therapist
| Listening to Inner Spaces--D'Onofrio (2013) |
Optional Thursday Afternoon and Evening Activities
Friday, July 26, 2019
Intertwinings: The Unconscious and "Whole"
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Opening Conversation
“Is it possible to understand the nature of the soul without understanding the nature of the whole?"
~Plato
“Understanding, in turn, is receptivity and suffering.”
~ Donna Orange
“We always understand too much, especially in analysis.
Most of the time, we’re fooling ourselves.”
~Jacques Lacan
~Plato
“Understanding, in turn, is receptivity and suffering.”
~ Donna Orange
“We always understand too much, especially in analysis.
Most of the time, we’re fooling ourselves.”
~Jacques Lacan
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Themes for the Day
- Beyond the Relationship: Insight, Symbolization, and Internalization
- The ‘Cure’: From ‘Alienation Identity’ to Subjectivity
- Intertwining: Integration and Restitution Toward Wholeness
- On Character and the Therapeutic Demands for the Therapist
- Concluding Remarks, Seminar Evaluation, and Closing Lunch
"What emerges from unconscious depths has
an order, a continuity, and a reason of its own."
~Theodore Reik
Sources for Inspiration and Conversation
Selected Bibliography*
- Ahktar, S. (2007). The 'listening cure': An overview. In S. Ahktar (Ed.) Listening to others: Developmental and clinical aspects of empathy and attunement (pp 1-16). Lahnam: Jason Aronson.Bateman, A., & Fonagy, P. (2004). Psychotherapy for borderline personality disorder: Mentalization–based treatment. London: Oxford University Press.
- Becker, E. (1972). The Denial of Death. New York: The Free Press.
- Bion, W. R. (1962/1984). Learning from experience. London: Karnac.
- Bion, W. R. (1981). Notes on memory and desire. In R. Langs (Ed.), Classics in psychoanalytic technique (pp. 259-260). New York: Jason Aronson.
- Bion, W. (1983). Attention and interpretation. Northvale: Aronson.
- Bion, W. (2005). The Tavistock lectures. London: Karnac.
- Biswanger, L. (1963). Being-in-the-world. (J. Needleman, trans.). New York: Harper & Row.
- Bowlby, J. (1982). Attachment (2nd ed.). New York: Basic Books.
- Bowlby, J. (1988). A secure base: Parent-child attachment and healthy human development. New York: Basic Books.
- Bollas, C. (1987). The shadow of the object: Psychoanalysis of the unthought known. New York: Columbia University Press.
- Boss, M. (1979). Existential foundations for medicine and psychology. New York: Jason Aronson.
- Bromberg, P. (1998). Standing in the spaces: Essays on clinical process, trauma, and dissociation. Hillsdale, NJ: The Analytic Press.
- Buber, M. (1955). Between man and man. Boston: Beacon Press.
- Buber, M (1958). The I and Thou. New York: Macmillan.
- Casement, P. (1991). Learning from the patient. London: Routledge.
- Casement, P. (2002). Learning from our mistakes: Beyond dogma in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. New York: Guilford.
- Casement, P. (2006). Learning from life: Becoming a psychoanalyst. London: Routledge.
- Cozolino, L. (2006). The neuroscience of psychotherapy, 2nd. New York: Norton.
- Davis, W. A. (1989). Inwardness and existence: Subjectivity in/and Hegel, Heidegger, Marx, and Freud. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
- Davis, W. A. (2001). Deracination: Historicity, Hiroshima, and the tragic imperative. Albany: SUNY Press.
- Dalle Pezze, B. (2006). Heidegger on gelassenheit. Minerva--An internet Journal of Philosophy, 10, 94-122.
- Fink, B. (2017). A clinical introduction to Freud: Techniques for everyday practice. New York: Norton.
- Fonagy, P., Gergely, G., Jurist, E., Target, M. (2002). Affect regulation, mentalization, and the development of the self. New York: Other Press.
- Freud, S., In Strachey, J., In Freud, A., & In Richards, A. (1966). The Standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud. London: Hogarth Press.
- Friedman, M. (1985). The healing dialogue in psychotherapy. New York: Jason Aaronson.
- Fromm, E. (1951). The forgotten language: An introduction to the understanding of dreamsn, fairytales, and myths. New York: Grove Press.
- Fromm-Reichmann, F. (1960). Principles of intensive psychotherapy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
- Hall, B. (2016). Psychotherapy's pilgrim-poet: The story within. Colorado Springs, CO: University Professor's Press.
- Heidegger, M. (1927/1962). Being and time. (J. Macquarrie and E Robinson, trans.). San Francisco: HarperCollins.
- Jung, C. (1954). The practice of psychotherapy. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
- Jung, C. (1959). The concept of the collective unconscious (pp.42-53), Concerning the archetypes, with special reference to the anima concept (pp. 54-72), & Psychological aspects of the mother archetype (pp. 73-110). The archetypes of the Collective Unconscious, V 9,I of the Collected Works of C. G. Jung. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
- Kierkegaard, S. (1849/1989). The Sickness unto death. (A. Hannah, trans.). London: Penguin.
- Klein, M. (1952). The Origins of Transference. Int. J. Psycho-Anal., 33:433-438
- Klein, M. (1946). Notes on Some Schizoid Mechanisms1. Int. J. Psycho-Anal., 27:99-110
- Klein, M. (1937/1975). Love, Guilt and Reparation. In Love, Guilt, and Reparation and other essays, 1921-1945, pp. 306-343. New York: The Free Press.
- Klein, M. (1975). Envy and Gratitude. In Envy and Gratitude and Other Works 1946–1963. Int. Psycho-Anal. Lib., 176-235. London: The Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psycho-Analysis.
- Kleinberg-Levin, D. M. (2008). Before the voice of reason: Echoes of responsibility in Merleau-Ponty’s and Levinas’s Ethics. New York: SUNY Press.
- Kristeva, J. (1982). Powers of horror: An essay on abjection. (L. S. Roudiez, trans.). New York: Columbia University Press.
- Kristeva, J. (1987). Tales of love. New York: Columbia University Press.
- Kristeva, J. (1989). Black sun: Depression and melancholia. New York: Columbia University Press.
- Kristeva, J. (1995). New maladies of the soul. (R. Guberman, trans). New York: Columbia University Press.
- Kristeva, J. (2010). Hatred and forgiveness. New York: Columbia University Press.
- Lacan, J. (1988). The seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book I: Freud's papers on technique 1953-1954, (J. Forrester, trans.). New York: Norton.
- Lacan, J. (1988). The seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book II: The ego in Freud's theory and in the technique of psychoanalysis 1954-1955. (S. Tomasselli, trans.). New York: Norton.
- Lacan, J. (1993). The seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book III: Psychoses 1955-1956. (R. Grigg, trans.). New York: Norton.
- Lacan, J. (1997). The Seminar f Jacques Lacan: Book VII: The ethics of psychoanalysis 1959-1960. (D. Porter, Trans.). New York Norton.
- Lacan, J. (1998). The seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book XI: The four fundamental concepts of psychoanalysis. (A. Sheridan, trans.). New York: Norton.
- Lacan, J. (1999). The seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book XX: Encore: On feminine sexuality, the limits of love and knowledge 1972-1973 (B. Fink, trans.).. New York: Norton.
- Lacan, J. (2006). Ecrits. (B. Fink, trans.). New York: Norton.
- Lacan, J. (2007). The seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book XVII: The other side of psychoanalysis (R. Grigg, trans.). New York: Norton.
- Lacan, J. (2016). The seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book XXIII: The sinthome. (A. R. Price, trans.). Malden, MA: Polity.
- Langs, R. (1976). The bi-personal field. New York: Jason Aronson.
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- Langs, R. (1979). The therapeutic environment. New York: Jason Aronson.
- Langs, R. (1980). Interactions: The realm of transference and countertransference. New York: Jason Aronson.
- Langs, R. (1981). Resistances and interventions. New York: Jason Aronson.
- Langs, R. (1982). The psychotherapeutic conspiracy. New York: Jason Aronson.
- Langs, R. (1988). Decoding your dreams: A revolutionary technique for understanding your dreams. New York: Balantine.
- Langs, R. (1993). Empowered psychotherapy: Teaching self-processing. London: Karnac.
- Langs, R. (1994). Doing supervision and being supervised. London: Karnac.
- Langs, R. (1995). Clinical Practice and the architecture of the mind. London: Karnac.
- Langs, R. (1996). The evolution of the emotion-processing mind. Madison: International Universities Press.
- Langs, R. (1997). Death anxiety in clinical practice. London: Karnac.
- Langs, R. (1999). The Evolution of the emotion processing mind: With an introduction to mental Darwinism. New York: International Universities Press.
- Langs, R. (2004). Fundamentals of adaptive psychotherapy and counselling. New York: Palgrave MacMillan.
- Langs, R. (2006). Love and death in psychotherapy. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
- Levin, D. (1985). The body's recollection of being: Phenomenological psychology and the deconstruction of nihilism. New York: Routledge.
- Levin, D. (1988). The opening of vision: Nihilism and the post-modern situation. New York: Routledge.
- Levin, D. (1989). The listening self: Personal growth, social change, and the closure of metaphysics. London: Routledge.
- Mahler, M., Pine, F., & Bergman, A. (1975). The psychological birth of the infant: Symbiosis and individuation. New York: Basic Books.
- May, R., Angel, E., & Ellenberger, H. F. (1958). Existence: A new dimension in psychiatry and psychology. New York: Simon & Schuster.
- McGilchrist, I. (2009). The master and his emissary: The divided brain and the making of the western world. New Haven: Yale University Press.
- Neumann, E. (1954). The origins and history of consciousness. (R. F. C. Hull, trans.). Princeton: Princeton University Press.
- Neumann, E. (1963). The great mother. (R. Manheim, trans.). Princeton: Princeton University Press.
- Neumann, E. (1973). The child. Boston: Shambahala Publications.
- Oliver, K. (1998). Tracing the signifier behind the scenes of desire: Krestiva’s challenge to Lacan’s analysis. In H. Silverman, ed. Cultural Semiosis: Tracing the signifier, (pp. 83-104). New York: Routledge.
- Orange, D. (2011). The suffering stranger: Hermeneutics for everyday practice. New York: Routledge.
- Ricoeur, P. (1970). Freud and philosophy: An essay on interpretation. (D. Savage, trans.). New Haven: Yale University Press.
- Rogers, C. (1980). A way of being. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
- Seinfeld, J. (1990). The bad object: Handling the negative therapeutic reaction in psychotherapy. Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson.
- Seinfeld, J. (1993). Interpreting and holding. Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson.
- Seinfeld, J. (1996). Containing Rage, Terror, and Despair. New York: Aronson.
- Searles, H.F. (1973). Concerning Therapeutic Symbiosis. Annu. Psychoanal., 1:247-262
- Searles, H. (1965). Collected papers on schizophrenia and related subjects. NY: International Universities Press.
- Searles, H. (1979). Countertransference and related subjects. Madison: International Universities Press.
- Schneiderman, S. (1980). Returning to Freud: Clinical psychoanalysis in the school of Lacan. New Haven: Yale University Press.
- Schore, A. (2012). The science of the art of psychotherapy. New York: Norton.
- Silverman, H. J. (Ed.) (1998). Cultural semiosis: Tracing the signifier. New York: Routledge.
- Soler, C. (2014). Lacan--The unconscious reinvented. London: Karnac.
- Solms, M. (2015). The feeling brain: Selected papers on neuropsychoanalysis. London: Karnac.
- Solms, M., & Turnbull, O. (2002). The brain and the inner world: An introduction to the neuroscience of subjective experience. New York: Other Press.
- Sussman, M. (2007). A curious calling: Unconscious motivations for practicing psychotherapy, (2nd ed.). New York: Aronson.
- Verhaeghe, P. (2004). On being normal and other disorders: A manual for clinical psychodiagnostics, (S. Jotthandt, trans.). New York: Other Press.
- Wilberg, P. (2004). The therapist as listener: Martin Heidegger and the missing dimension of counseling and psychotherapy Training. Eastbourne, Sussex: New Gnosis Publications.
- Wilberg, P. (2013). Being and listening: Counselling, psychoanalysis, and the ontology of listening. Whistable, Great Britain: New Yoga Publications.
- Winnicott, D. (1958/1992). Through pediatrics to psycho-analysis: Collected papers. New York: Brunner/Mazel.
- Winnicott, D.W. (1949). Hate in the Counter-Transference. Int. J. Psycho-Anal., 30:69-74
- Winnicott, D.W. (1958). The Capacity to be Alone1. Int. J. Psycho-Anal., 39:416-420
- Winnicott, D.W. (1960). The Theory of the Parent-Infant Relationship1. Int. J. Psycho-Anal., 41:585-595
- Winnicott, D. W. (1965). Maturational processes and the facilitative environment. New York: International Universities Press.
- Winnicott, D. (1971/2005). Playing with reality. London: Routledge.
- Winnicott, D.W. (1974). Fear of Breakdown. Int. Rev. Psycho-Anal., 1:103-107.
*This selected bibliography represents sources of influence for the ideas presented in this seminar.
