ABSTRACT
Holding more or less forecloses this arena because during moments of holding, patient and analyst dwell largely within one or another kind of illusion of attunement. I allow my patient to treat me as a subjective object (Winnicott, 1969) and mostly remain in an emotionally reciprocal, conjunctive position. The introduction of my “otherness” disrupts my patient’s sense of “going on being,” and I thus try not to introduce myself (my “separate” understanding or reactions): I try, as much as possible, to bracket my subjectivity (and my patient participates in this bracketing process). While this co-constructed holding space deepens my patient’s contact with her internal world, it leaves me out and thus has little impact on her experience of otherness. The holding process is also disrupted by interpretations or emotional communications that express a different (disjunctive) understanding. So holding leaves my patient more or less at the mercy of my capacity for attunement and my capacity to bracket.
