ABSTRACT
Chapter 2 discusses the relationship between the development of dimensionality – the idea of internal space – its role in emotional and psychological growth, and the capacity to visualise and imagine, since an image needs a space in which to live, and to some extent, to be framed. I draw here on Freud’s several uses of spatial metaphor and its foundational contribution to psychoanalytic thought, as well as concepts derived from Kleinian, Post-Kleinian and Object Relations approaches to the subject including those of Melanie Klein (projection, position and oscillation), Esther Bick (surface and skin), Donald Winnicott (potential, transitional and overlapping space and movement) and the chief theoretical references, Wilfred Bion (containment) and Donald Meltzer (claustrum states and other writings on dimensionality). Further thoughts on the theme of dimensionality and its place in emotional development come from Milner, Money-Kyrle and Ogden. Clinical examples serve to illustrate the importance of this area of development as it relates to the growth of the capacity to form and to retain an image in the absence of the object.
Much of the emphasis here is on the phenomenon of imagery in the session as something that is largely, albeit unconsciously, co-constructed and is to some extent a consequence of projection.
