ABSTRACT
During psychotherapy, when clinicians become immersed in flow states (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990, 1996) with patients, they get caught up in the throes of implicit processes as intuitively guided. Here, there may be emotional challenge, yet often little sense of effort. When therapists and patients ride the waves of interrelatedness, it becomes easy to find smooth rhythms of exchange. Time flies by. Psychotherapy can take on an all-enveloping quality of wholeness. This sometimes feels like a dance where exquisitely coordinated movements are choreographed by no one and both people at once. Or, it may feel like a song of syncopated call and response. When psychotherapists are lucky enough to spend long periods intuitively immersed, despite intense often negative emotional involvement, they can nonetheless leave work feeling energized and refreshed. Amid deep intuitive engagement, the relationship itself becomes vitalized, pulling each person along, ideally nudging both into spontaneous, unexpected places.
