Psychic Presences and Absences – The Aesthetic Dimension of the Mind.

 Artwork: A painter sees a path through a field of poppies | Janet Oakes | Acrylic on canvas

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We are bees of the invisible. We gather the honey of the visible and store it in the golden honeycomb of the invisible.
~ Rilke
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Today, like every other day, we wake up empty and frightened. Don’t open the door to the study and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument. Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground…
~ Rumi
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This course is offered as an invitation to venture together into the aesthetic dimension of psychic life. We will bring the aesthetic sensibility into focus as a practice of listening – attuning to the rhythm, metaphor, imaging, silence and most significantly to the unspoken currents that move beneath the surface of experience within and between the two presences in the analytic field. It is the ineffable in clinical work that constitutes the deepest conversation, one that must be attended to if the analytic process is to come alive as a transformational force.

Without this attunement, even the most seasoned therapist may at times find themselves lost in darkness without a compass.

The aesthetic approach is about shape as much as content. It casts a soft light on how something is said as much as what is said, attending to the sensuous, affective and imaginative textures of psychic life. In the encounter of two presences, conception becomes possible. A new experience emerges. A new shape forms. Aesthetics is a mode of apprehension that precedes interpretation, a way of being affected by the other and by the analytic situation as it unfolds in the immediacy of the analytic encounter. From this perspective, the aesthetic dimension provides one of the conditions of possibility for being and becoming. It creates conditions for meaning to exist. Before meaning can be interpreted, it must first be felt, imagined and given form. The analytic task is not to produce or uncover meaning but to

cultivate the conditions in which it may come into being. Interpretation, when it matters, arrives not as an explanation but as a deeply evocative gesture of respect.

This course will bring into focus the aesthetic tools necessary to work within this dimension. These powerful tools will be illuminated through our literature selections and our concrete clinical objectives:

1. Creating an Emotional Field. Shifting the focus from traditional

interpretation toward sensing and transforming the emotional tenor within the analytic session.

2. Developing the Dreaming Function: Cultivating the dreaming function of the mind-to move from undreamed to dreamed experience.

3. Utilizing Reverie: Embracing reverie as a primary, active analytic instrument.

4. Prioritizing the Action of Symbolization: Focusing on the dynamic process of

symbolizing rather than treating the symbol as a static object. The symbol becomes

an achievement- the co-created result of the analytic couple.

5. Facilitating Play: Animating play as an emergent property of the clinical field when it becomes elastic and alive.

6. Expanding to Field Narration: Integrating field narration as an essential clinical tool in addition to free association.

 

In Dream
By Catherine Young

To this moment of quiet
In the dusk of the day
The dream returns…
Full-hearted
In a soft-bloom glow
And a sweet scent all its own.
It arrives
A visitor from another place
From a distant landscape of
Vitality and grace.
My question – an attempt to learn
Who is the weaver
Incandescent, in full burn?
Who dares to love the possible
Attempt the impossible
Speak to the unspeakable
And bear the unbearable?
Who among us
Reaches with open heart
Ready with mouth, body and thought
To taste the fragrant life
Offered in each moment sought?
To catch the drop that lingers
And suddenly disappears
To see the dream suspended
Either lost, found or feared?
Who among us walks
In awe of grace
Upon this wounded earth
And does no harm
To this gifted, enchanted place?
Is it one who
from the bottom of their feet
To the edge of their skin
feels the rising of the heat
And steps –
further in?

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Dates (Last Thursday of the month)
September 24, 2026 – June 24, 2027
no session in December

Time: 7:30pm-9:30pm PST

Location: online

COST:

General Professional: $360
WCPSI Member/Guest Member: $304
Analyst in Training (AIT), Student: $225

Registration closes September 21st @ 5pm PST

Register