Response to 'Transgender medicalization and the attempt to evade psychological distress' (Withers 2020) and to Herdzik's (2021) response to Withers

Psyche is non-binary and multiple and clinical work in the analytic container must be held in the fluidity of multiplicity. Analysts are called to bring Queer energy to analytical attitude. Queer energy is intrinsically non-conforming and desires to confront a priori concepts in service to the unfolding of the Self. A Queer analytic attitude seeks to blur narrative, deconstruct language and listen deeply for what is emergent in the field. Queer energy is also deeply activating and often results in polarizations of attitude and a failure to hold what is emergent. This response to Withers (2020) and to (Herdzik 2021) is an invitation for all of us to engage our activated complexes around work with transgender issues and the fluidity of the Queer experience. The multiplicity of the Self seeks to be known through analytic process. Consciously held authentic experience of what is emergent and thus unknown is at the core of this process. An analysis capable of holding Queer energy offers a theatre for the exploration of gender identity and its expression.

The day the clock stopped. Primitive states of unintegration, multidimensional working through and the birth of the analytical subject

This paper is based on one idea and built around one clinical experience that helped me to broaden my comprehension of it. The idea, underlying the work of several authors, is that when the analytic field is saturated with primitive and unintegrated mental contents, the analyst's somatic countertransference is a precious indicator of a deep, dissociated form of communication. The clinical experience concerns the difficult elaboration of a complex, multifaceted countertransference that took place during the early stages of the analysis of a sensitive patient who used to communicate in a very dissociated way and that I found hard to contain. This experience, closely described in the article, led me to formulate the clinical idea that the transference field may be made of distinct layers (psychoid, affective, verbal), and that each one of them may potentially convey dissociated, even contrasting bits of information. The corollary of this is that the analyst should be ready to accept contrasting sensations, feelings and thoughts at the same time, as they might be the basic ingredients of a complex reverie. The analyst could find himself/herself in front of his/her own internal unelaborated multiplicity before a symbolic image may emerge to link the scattered pieces of the experience. Nevertheless, the heart of this paper is not about suggesting an idea, but in the sharing of a complex working through, which fostered the birth of a new, more human relational perspective: the capacity of being together in time, in a transitional space where there is neither total separation nor fusion.

Plurality of psychic states in the field

The archetypal images of separation and dissociation are very present in Jung's model of individuation, and Jung proposed a dynamic relationship between conscious and unconscious parts of the psyche of analyst and analysand. In addition, numerous contemporary authors emphasize the multiplicity of the self and the emergence of the field created by both participants, allowing for symbolization and transformation. I describe here my attempts to reach the encapsulated psychic split of a client. Defeated in my search for any conscious, developed self-state that could readily match his, I had to nurture the field of our relationship, where a child was imprisoned and allow space for daydreaming. The field ultimately supported the emergence of a primitive part of me matching his, which he required to safely mirror his experience. In staying and dreaming within this field of longing, we reconstructed his initial trauma. The defeat of my ego and the response to the multiplicity of Mark's states through the sustained reverie of holding a child, a single archetypal image, stirred the good mother in me, forged a container for non-rational, affective somatic psychic splits, and initiated psychic changes.