ABSTRACT

This chapter focuses on the single images which this state of mind gives spontaneous rise to from a less conscious part of the mind of the analyst. It reviews that in order to be psychoanalysis, the 'here and now' technical approach requires the preservation of the time element via the notion of 'evenly suspended attention' and of its more developed and contemporary derivative, 'reverie'. The image coming out of reverie is the analyst's own move towards concreteness and towards meeting the patient in that area of thinking grounded in the body and taps into a more primitive experience of connectiveness. The transformation seeks in psychoanalysis is twofold: a transformation into language and a transformation into using language in a way which supports symbolic thinking. The chapter considers that impasse always has at its root the absence of that third temporal element, giving rise to concrete thinking on the part of both analyst and patient.