ABSTRACT
Aesthetic sensitivity and responsiveness in the analytic process from both analyst and patient offers a connection between domains of analytic experience that often appear superficially in conflict. This chapter focuses on a particular facet of "moments of meeting", specifically, the role of aesthetic experience in facilitating moments of meeting in analytic therapy. A focus on aesthetics in the analytic setting moves US away from correctness, rightness, or accuracy of interpretation and into a perspective which places value on narrative suitability, beauty, and evocativeness. While there are many possible vertices to consider, including one's individual subjectivity, Bion proposed that analytic encounters can be experienced and reflected upon from any of three primary vertices: the religious vertex, the aesthetic vertex. The aesthetic vertex needs the aesthetic object, which holds the tension between artistic, religious and scientific vertices until the evolution of the symbol that contains what is meaningful at any given moment.
