ABSTRACT
In this article, written in the midst of the COVID pandemic, the author shows how alienating circumstances annihilate the welcome “mess” of human embodied connectedness: in violating the fundamental connection between self and environment, developmentally engrained states of anxiety are evoked by a sense of being lost in (cyber)space. In response to this threat, one of two unconscious psyche-somatic strategies is applied: expulsion of mental contents, leading to a sense of disintegration, or a defensive constriction, leading to psyche-somatic agony.
Contending that “the space of the mind affects its content and vice versa” (Grotstein, 1978, p. 55), the author suggests that the cultivation of internal spaciousness – as promoted in contemporary psychoanalytical approaches – is a determining factor in the psychotherapeutic process. More specifically: when properly cultivated, the emergent sense of spaciousness helps therapists and patients transcend the seemingly insurmountable dichotomies of individual vs. eco-environmental, life vs. death, and emergence vs. diffusion. This approach, strongly supported by cardinal Buddhist tenets, promotes psyche-somatic at-one-ment between therapist and patient. Thus, co-jointly making space for the mess of humanhood, it nurtures and enhances both the experience of and the capacity for going-on-being.
