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Borderline Transitions: Bodily, Psychic and Relational Rhythms in Trans(ce)-Analysis

Proposing body-transitions in an analytic relationship with borderline patients as a first step, then letting it happen, seems transgressive at first but is ultimately very creative and efficient. The bodies of the patient and analyst are engaged in a “feeling-with” via touch, knowledge-held-in-the-gesture, via trances. Ferenczi had already experienced these forms of clinical work with some success. We refer here to this new form of analytic psychotherapy. Thus, the body-subjects become capable of floating. The very contemporary art-works made by Ulrike Bolenz opens up even more the creative dimension of the body-transitions. The idea is that the desire of borderline subjects will be such that the inter-personal meeting is not avoided, even considering the risk to the person of the analyst. Nowadays Ferenczi would say that there are no other means to complete a treatment than open his inner world to the patient, and that this absolutely does not lead to an identification with the analyst.

Moving House: On the “Toing and Froing” between Crisis Intervention and a Treatment Unit

This essay tracks the experiences of an excited psychotic woman who moves from a closed crisis unit to an open treatment unit. Initially the move has devastating consequences and she falls apart. After only a couple of days she is transferred back to the closed unit in a hypo-manic, completely excited, state. This is the beginning of a process involving both units. We decide to move her gradually: a couple of hours a day in the closed unit and a couple of hours a day in the open one. At first the only idea we have is to organise regular meetings between the teams. Very soon the idea develops to work more with her transference onto objects and places rather than with her transference onto members of the team. Work with a photo album quickly reduces her excitation. In a second stage we try to explain what went wrong with her first transfer and what worked with the second attempt. To this end we use the conceptual apparatus of Institutional Psychotherapy, the notion of contact (Szondi/Schotte), and Winnicott’s ideas with regard to the transitional object and the continuity of being.

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L’institution aux prises avec le corps: déchirures du corps du psychotique, déchirure du corps soignant

Cet article présente un aspect du travail quotidien au sein d’une institution résidentielle de type communautaire avec des adultes souffrant de psychose. Le travail en question est celui effectué depuis plusieurs années à propos de la prise en charge du corps des patients d’un point de vue résolument non médical mais plutôt dans ce qu’il est le support du contact et de l’échange social. Cette prise en charge du corps cadrée par un atelier “Soins du corps” n’a pas été sans poser de questions au corps soignant tant toucher des corps risque de brûler les doigts sur un versant érotique qui ne peut être canalisé et, dès lors, détourné, que par une présence empreinte de tendresse qu’il n’est pas simple pour les soignants de mettre en route et d’accepter. Cela dit, cette expérience nous montre quotidiennement, dans ses effets positifs et inattendus pour nos patients, le bien-fondé d’une réflexion et d’une prise en charge assumée du corps du patient en tant que partie prenante et engageante du lien social et de l’inscription du sujet dans la culture et la rencontre.