Receptivity,or Going on (Not) Being: Commentary on Paper by Robert Grossmark

“The treatment hinged on my being able to live with him in this ongoing non-existence and know it and tolerate it, and expect no more,” writes Dr. Robert Grossmark about himself and his patient, Kyle (pp. 637–638). This is a key sentence, outlining the core of the enlightening analytic work done. I comment on the linkage between living the ongoing nonexistence and going-on-(not)-being, then reflect about the distinction between what I call the “outward” technique, which is everything Grossmark describes about treating Kyle, and the “inward” technique, which is all that occurred within him, in an inner, hidden, powerful, unconscious dialogue with the patient, and which is only hinted at. In this context, with patients like Kyle, who bring to the analyst physical sensations and actions for dreaming, the analyst's corporeality, by which I mean his experience of his body and his capacity to connect it to emotion, thereby lending it meaning, has a critical importance. I bring, in a nutshell, references to several psychoanalytic writers about the subject of corporeality in analytic treatment and use a vignette from an analysis to demonstrate the point.