ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of the way concepts from poetics can inform the practice of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. After a brief introduction, the chapter turns to specific topics in poetics. Metaphors, which bridge the divide between our subjectivity and the world, are of central importance to both therapy and poetry. Metaphors establish an analytic third, their absence in worlds dominated by the concrete and the reification of abstractions creates a world of deadness. Images in poetry are pure perception, without the intention behind metaphor. They create moments of shared perception and intersubjective relatedness. Sound and rhythm convey emotion the meaning of the words. In therapy, they are analogous to the nonverbal communication that forms the earliest basis of psychological life. A discussion of form in poetry leads to a discussion of the mutually felt aesthetic pleasure patients feel as the form of their unique treatment emerges. The chapter concludes with a case example of a severely traumatized patient whose successful treatment draws on each of these poetic concepts.
