From Reverie to Interpretation: Transforming Thought into the Action of Psychoanalysis

Bion's identification of reverie as a psychoanalytic concept has drawn attention to a dimension of the analyst's experience with tremendous potential to enrich our interpretive understanding. The courage of these authors in revealing their own process of reverie as transformed into the action of psychoanalysis will inspire and foster further investigation of this fruitful yet heretofore infrequently explored area of psychoanalytic discovery.

Table of Contents:
Permissions , Introduction , Escape within , The primacy of reverie in making contact with a new couple , Come on—hold a baby’s hand , Reverie and the aesthetics of psychoanalysis , From Fairbairn to the planet Neptune: reverie and the animistic psyche , The timing of the use of reverie , Infant observation as a pathway towards experiencing reverie and learning to interpret , The magnetic compass of reverie , The couple , Courage and sincerity as a base for reverie and interpretation , Working with stone, working with psyche: the role of reverie in the process of making art and working with patients , Little Hans went alone into the wide world;* or beta elements in search of a container for meaning , The spiral of transference: from mutative interpretation to reverie

About the Author :
Dana Blue, LICSW, FIPA, is a board-certified training and supervising psychoanalyst for the Northwestern Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, where she teaches on the faculty and serves as Director of Training. In her private practice in Seattle, Dana engages in psychoanalysis with adults and parent-infant pairs, and offers clinical supervision and consultation to therapists seeking additional grounding in contemporary object relations psychoanalysis. Along with Caron Harrang, Dana co-chaired the organising committee for the 2014 International Evolving British Object Relations Conference, titled 'From Reverie to Interpretation: Transforming Thought into the Action of Psychoanalysis'. The resulting papers form the substance of this book. Caron Harrang, LICSW, FIPA, is a board-certified training and supervising psychoanalyst and current President of the Northwestern Psychoanalytic Society and Institute (NPSI). She lives and maintains a private practice working with mothers and infants, adolescents, and adults in Seattle, WA (USA). She is former Managing Editor of the Confederation of Independent Psychoanalytic Societies (CIPS) 'News Brief' and of the NPSI newsletter, 'Selected Facts'. Recent publications include 'Psychic skin and narcissistic rage: Reflections on Almodovar's The Skin I Live In', 'IJP', Vol. 93, No. 5, and 'Painting Poppies: On the relationship between concrete and metaphorical thinking', in 'Absolute Truths and Unbearable Psychic Pain'. She also co-chaired the organizing committee for the 2014 International Evolving British Object Relations Conference on 'From Reverie to Interpretation: Transforming Thought into the Action of Psychoanalysis'.

Review :
'A remarkable contribution to psychoanalysis, offering theoretical presentations together with clinical vignettes organised around the motif of moving from reverie to interpretation. It will be useful to a wide range of mental heath professionals including Kleinians, Bionians, and others interested in exploring these concepts and these ways of thinking and working. Dana Blue and Caron Harrang have done an outstanding job of editing this compilation. Furthermore, they have made it possible to now share the knowledge and experience of the EBOR Conference contributors, who came from far and wide, with many more like-minded clinicians all around the world.'- Adriana Prengler, LMHC, FIPA, training and supervising psychoanalyst at the Northwestern Psychoanalytic Society and Institute and at the Caracas Psychoanalytic Society'This book, which reflects aptly the work of analysts as well as artists and other creative individuals, is a fine testimony to how Bion's analytic descendants have carried on his work in a manner which would have been to his liking. By this, I mean a creative engagement with an essential aspect of the analyst's armamentarium, the capacity for reverie, or 'dreaming with one's eyes open' as one listens to one's patients. Since all the chapters take up aspects of clinical and artistic reverie, it is altogether fitting that this compilation be regarded as part of the continuing tradition of how Bion's distillation of Kleinian psychoanalysis has itself been received and worked with by analysts interested in his work, not just in Europe and South America, but in the United States as well.'- Joseph Aguayo, PhD, FIPA, training and supervising psychoanalyst at the Psychoanalytic Center of California and co-editor with Barnet Malin of Wilfred Bion: Los Angeles Seminars and Supervision