ABSTRACT
The previous chapter clearly shows how intersubjective processes can characterize interpersonal relationships and how archetypal images may appear. This also applies to therapeutic work. The work with clients is also characterized by intersubjective processes. Even though internal working models or the involved people’s complexes structure the encounter, on the other hand something completely new can occur – for example, when an archetypal moment of meeting or a present moment happens. The possibility of this should always be left open, e.g. in therapy the subject of grandparents can occur suddenly and gain an influence that one would not initially suspect. An encounter in the therapeutic situation depends on whether the two parties have a common meaning for what happens, whether they jointly understand something or jointly share an emotional experience. An interpretation alone does not create an encounter. The meaning does not have to be verbalized, it does not have to be deliberate, it can appear as an emergent phenomenon in which the existing could be put in context and ‘understood’. (Daniel Stern and his Boston Group would describe these phenomena as moments of meeting.) The understanding of the meaning of what happened can be disturbed, you do not really understand the other, talk it over and thus nothing is ‘left’. A moment of meeting is thus not possible. But what makes encounter possible? Perhaps we first need to know about the interactions in therapy.
