Deep Diving: Imagination,Intuition, and the Interpenetration of Minds

How do we help patients who come to us without access to feelings and without curiosity about themselves and others? The author suggests that the analyst’s imagination and intuition provide a channel or medium through which to apprehend aspects of the patient’s internal life, make contact and communicate with younger parts of the patient, and provide containment to these parts of the person. As the analyst engages her imagination in this way, communication channels open and shared states of consciousness between analyst and patient are created, thereby facilitating the interpenetration of minds and the opening up of previously closed object worlds. In the course of this work, compassion serves as a vehicle for truth, penetrating previously closed object relational systems. This kind of work poses risks for the analyst.