ABSTRACT
In searching for ways to describe the psychoanalytic process, contemporary thinkers have used analogies to improvisational theater (Ringstrom, 2001), to free jazz (Knoblauch, 1999), to poetry (Shaddock, 2010), and to the regulatory interaction of caregivers and infants (Beebe & Lachmann, 2002). These analogies emphasize the dyadic nature of the treatment process, and highlight the spontaneous, improvisational nature of the analyst’s responses. This essay examines the role of creativity in the analytic process by comparing the moment-to-moment decisions that go into the process of composing a poem with the moment-to-moment decisions in an analytic session. In order to elucidate the analogy between the creative process in poetry and psychoanalysis, I will describe the making of a single one of my poems, “Asymptote,” (Shaddock, 2012) and then I will describe a clinical vignette of the treatment of a 57-year-old man.
