ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that psychoanalytic work that is grounded in the analytic presence, and the ensuing patient–analyst interconnectedness or “withnessing,” opens up yet another dimension of analytic functioning—a fundamental dimension involving a more encompassing model of analytic work. And it engenders new possibilities for extending the reach of the psychoanalytic treatment, particularly with more disturbed patients. The chapter introduces the key terms of the new dimension of analytic functioning. The starting point is the analyst’s “being there” or “presencing” within the patient’s experiential world and within the grip of the analytic process. Essentially, “presencing” is the analyst’s deep acceptance of the necessity of becoming an embedded, elemental, and sustaining functioning presence within the treatment process—thereby experiencing, withstanding, processing, and gradually transforming, from within, the repetitive cycle of pathological self–other relations and defenses. Through the analyst’s “presencing within”, patient and analyst enter another realm of experience—of patient–analyst interconnectedness or “withnessing.”
