In New York City, on June 17 and 18, Psy Broadcasting Corporation is sponsoring a conference "Beyond Words: Implicit Communication & Therapeutic Change." Click for all the details.
Some of the presentations look enticing, but I am especially sorry I won't be attending this one:
Philip Bromberg
Ordinary Minds, Extraordinary Reach: Thoughts on Embodiment, State-Sharing, and the Lived Unconscious
The biologist Rupert Sheldrake proposed that our minds are not confined inside of our heads, but stretch out beyond them. From this perspective I offer the view that the future of human mental development is not only relational but that it is intersubjective in ways that go beyond what we can now accept as possible. I see the growth of the mind's capacity for intersubjectivity as an ongoing process of "playing with boundaries" whereby an affectively embodied self-and-other are jointly constructing an intersubjective realm in which the coexistence of seemingly incompatible perspectives on reality become
possible because they are experienced as part of a greater whole that neither alone defines. What I call, metaphorically, "playing with boundaries," overlaps dramatically at the neurobiological level with what Allan Schore writes about as a right-brain to right-brain channel of affective communication -- a dialogue that takes place through dynamically fluctuating moment-to-moment state-sharing. It also overlaps with Pat Ogden's focus on the body as the context for relationally expanding regulatory boundaries of the "window of affect tolerance" for experiencing "not-me" self-states, and with Robert Bosnak's focus on the body in "Dreamwork" -- the relational process of reentering and reliving one's dream. I refer to this shared space as "a lived unconscious," and will explore some of its features as they are manifested during the process of "enactment" in treatment, including its "uncanny" aspects.
Comments