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

by | Vol 29 (3/4) 2011

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.

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