Guadalajara Psychoanalytic Association

Report: Dr. Gabriel Sapisochin’s visit.

INTRODUCTION

The Guadalajara Psychoanalytic Association is a relatively young Association. It was granted the status of Component Society of the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA) on August 1st, 2013, in the IPA Business Meeting during its 48th Congress: "Facing the Pain" in Prague. However, it has been since 1976 that it began as a Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Group with the diffusion of psychoanalysis.

Our Association’s goal is: To promote the study, the practice, the research and the diffusion of psychoanalysis. – Through its Annual Symposium, clinical and scientific meetings, a psychoanalytic journal, monothematic books, a newspaper, conferences, courses and extracurricular seminars, a movie club and Freud’s Bar, it encourages the discussion and the study of psychoanalysis, as well as its research and dissemination.

Therefore, support from CAPSA has been requested to invite different scholars of psychoanalysis to share their theories and viewpoints on several themes, as well as to hold supervisions in which the way they work can be appreciated. Something that has been highly enriching and for what we are grateful to experience.

On March 31st and April 1st of the present year we had the visit of Dr. Gabriel Sapisochin at the Psychoanalytic Association of Guadalajara, as part of the XXIX Symposium of the Americas. In this occasion, with the theme "The Psychoanalytic Process", it hosted 155 attendees, among analysts, candidates, graduate and undergraduate students.

PROGRAM DEVELOPMENT AND THEORETICAL CONTRIBUTIONS

A lecture by Dr. Sapisochin was held: "The Psychoanalytic Process: phenomenology and metapsychology of analytic listening". In this work the speaker began with the question: How and why do we listen to what we listen to? In order to answer this, Sapisochin suggests that states prior to the interpretation exist within the analyst. States related to the activation of the analyst’s emotionality, and that are only reached in the encounter with the patient. Where, as analysts, we depend only and entirely on ourselves, that is, on our psyche.

Our psyche is activated in two levels during the process of analytic listening: a) from an affective/empathic dimension – one that could be aligned with what Freud called evenly-suspended attention; where external experience (the patient’s) becomes internal experience (in the analyst). Similar to visual images in the analyst’s psyche, or something like daydreaming.

And b) from a countertransference process – where a series of transformations while listening occur, and a more passive attitude from the analyst is required so that Freud’s model of dreaming can operate.

After the conference there was an exchange with the public, with numerous contributions and doubts clearly explained by the Doctor.

Later that day, an analyst, member of the Guadalajara Association, presented the case of a patient, which enabled a productive supervision and the opportunity to understand more deeply the Doctor’s theoretical–clinical position regarding analytic listening in clinical work. The dynamic was as follows: first, the presentation of a brief clinical history and afterwards, two analytic sessions of the mentioned patient. Throughout this dynamic, Dr. Sapisochin shared his points of view, along with the public’s input and questions.

A second paper was presented: "The metapsychology of analytic listening in clinical work". The central questions to be answered were: How does the transformation work in the analyst take place? How to go from analytic listening to interpretation? To answer this, Dr. Sapisochin states that we part from an intuitive/empathic listening, functioning through images to later be put in words. Like an inner landscape that emerges in the analyst to be transformed into words that inform the patient of something unknowable, which implies, in a way, to dream by two. Accordingly, the analyst's mind is filled with images and verbal communication is the result of a long way in the process.

What kind of images emerge in the analyst? Visual scenes analogous to the patient's experience, where the analyst’s Id is somewhat of a data processor started by a psychic state of the patient. Scenes belonging to the analyst appear as support to what the patient goes through.

In order to better understand this, Sapisochin proposes we revisit Freud’s concept of agieren, emphasizing that there is a dramatic performance in the process. That is, an acted repetition related to subjective experiences that were never understood by the coherent Id and therefore cannot emerge as memories in the patient. Experiences registered in a non-verbal way and that emerge again through the dramatization in the presence of the analyst. It is a way of being and acting of the patient who dramatizes within the analytic setting. This is emphasized by Sapisochin as a psychic gesture – a way of being and acting in the world – an imaginary representational record that is expressed in the present, and is produced by the psyche’s need of structure that requires someone else to be expressed. Therefore, it is an enactment where patient and analyst are committed transferentially and for which the analyst has to offer him/herself to be used, and must act as a guest.

In this sense, there are archaic evidences that can only be dramatized (agieren) and not exclusively through the return of the repressed. Everything that is acted, in or out of a session, represents the unconscious in a different mode than the repressed. What the patient acts is "a dramatized and performed dream during vigil; a dream that was not dreamed."

Last but not least, Sapisochin reminds us that this particular ability of analytic listening has its origins within the gears of the analyst’s analytic process.

Following the dynamic previously mentioned, at the end of the presentation Dr. Sapisochin answered questions and clarified doubts, delving into aspects that might have not been totally understood at first.

Afterwards, another analyst of the Guadalajara Association presented clinical material, which was supervised following the same dynamic as the previous supervision.

At the end of the day, a very enriching dialogue and exchange of conclusions took place. It brought great participation not only from members of the Guadalajara Psychoanalytic Association but also from all attendees. Dr. Sapisochin answered all concerns in a clear, deep and simple way, and made complex theoretical concepts accessible to all.

COMMUNITY IMPACT

Dr. Sapisochin’s intervention in this Symposium was a highly enriching experience not only for graduate students and psychoanalysts in training at our Institute; it allowed the general public who is not familiar with the psychoanalytical environment and students from other cities in Mexico to get a close and different view on psychoanalysis as a therapeutic method.

Particularly to us as psychoanalysts, it opens other possibilities of listening to the patient, as well as the use of other resources as analysts, following the notion of "daydreaming" considering each of the actors in the process.

We are confident that our patients will also be benefited from these contributions and exchange of ideas.

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