My publications
Going Home: Migration as Enactment and Symbol
Abstract The concepts of home and migration are briefly explored. Reference is made to the reflections of several writers on migration suggesting that migrants may experience alienation, even permanent melancholia. There is discussion of the need to mourn what has been lost and left behind, and of the challenge in analytic work with a migrant […]
Analytic attitude – focus or embodiment? Subtle communications in the transference/countertransference relationship
Abstract The paper considers a ‘befallment’ that occurred in the course of analysis at a time when the focus of work was too much at a conscious level, dissociated from the patient’s embodied and visceral depths. A rigidly held attitude of focal attention is considered as potentially a defence against embodied experiences of overwhelm and […]
Boundary and analytic attitude: reflections on a summer holiday break
Abstract The effect of a boundary in analytic work at the summer holiday break is discussed in relation to archetypal experiences of exclusion, loss and limitation. Some attempts by patients to mitigate an analyst’s act of separation are reviewed as enactments, and in particular the meanings of a gift made by one patient. Analytic attitude […]
Confronting Bluebeard: totalitarian regimes in childhood and in the collective psyche
Abstract Beginning with the story of Bluebeard, the author considers how traumatic overwhelm can occur in everyday childhood situations of a psychically murderous quality; for example, a nanny’s totalitarian regime may be invisible to parents ruled by collective social and cultural norms. A child who is remote from mother and idealises a father embodying a […]
© Susanna Wright
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