Why I Prefer an Empty Cupboard: Some Thoughts About Finding Words and Meaning in the Analytic Situation - Jennifer Stein
Date: 30 January 2010
10am - 12pm
Chair: Lawrence Brown
Analytic practice and theory is often seen as inaccessible or even elitist because of the language employed to convey meaning. In this talk I would like to explore the ways in which we find words and meaning in our work with analytic patients. It would seem that while the analytic world has taken meaning from the poets, and embraces the idea of being capable of 'being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts without any irritable reaching after fact and reason', it also leans heavily on preconceived theoretical models with all their verbal paraphanalia. While Michael Fordham gave us the notion of the mental 'filing cabinet' in which we can store our theories and language but not take into the consulting room, I wonder if this does not, in fact, adequately contain the anxieties of being left like 'Old Mother Hubbard', who found the cupboard to be bare.
I would like to explore this experience with you, and to consider Robert Hobson's use of Rilke's metaphor - 'a language of word kernels, a language that's not gathered, up above, on stalks, but grasped in the speech seed......Oh how often one longs to speak a few degrees more deeply...a shade further in the ground...but one gets only a minimal layer further down; one's left with a mere intimation of the kind of speech that may be possible there, where silence reigns.'
Jennifer Stein is a Member of The SAP and a consultant psychotherapist within the NHS. She currently works full-time in the Health Service, running a psychotherapy service for young adults. She also has a private analytic practice in Aylesbury.
Lawrence Brown is a Training Analyst of The SAP working in private practice with adults and children.
Venue: Friends Meeting House, 43 St. Giles, Oxford, OX1 3LW
Cost: £17 including coffee
Posted by SAP Admin
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