Trusting your senses and your intuition. The Analytic Third

When in conversation I often wonder, how it is that the older I become, the more I rely on intuition to discern 'what is truly being communicated'.

Take for instance a familiar scene. You're at a gathering alongside a friend of the host, whom you’ve been paired with. You find yourself attentively attempting to connect with this person, whose hobbies and interests don’t seem to align with yours and who appears to be somewhat not in tune with their reflective functioning. Perhaps they're nervous? Perhaps you're just getting to know each other and that's fine. After a few minutes talking, your mind begins to drift as they settle in and describe the details of their newest purchase and then the demise of their beloved team. Even though you seem interested, you wonder if they are able to discern that your attention is wandering? You're aware of subtle shifts in your stance, your responses and body language. Surely they must have a sense of your demeanour, as much as on the surface, they appear not to have.

You begin to consider for how long you should continue with what is now beginning to seem like a trap? How to politely slip away? How to save their feelings, and your own?

Is this person simply boring; are you boring; are they deliberately attempting to bore you? Are they perhaps not aware of themselves or could this be social anxiety? Are they even concerned with your responses to them? Are you trusting your senses and your intuition?

Is this a strategy a way to get away from you, or is it themselves they wish to take a break from? Is it that part of them is subtly explaining to you how ‘trapped’ they feel by their life’s circumstance? How things have become insipid. Without breaks. Without an exit. Are they asking of you, how can they leave themselves politely, without disturbance or upsetting those they might love?

In the referenced paper Ogden (1994), establishes in great detail the importance born of the internal dialogue and daydreams of the analyst, in developing an understanding of the patients predicament.

Reading this paper, I was particularly struck by his willingness to scrutinise the mundane material of his own life, rather than dispense with what might seem irrelevant to the patients issues (or rather only relevant to him). Instead he attends to his disparate ephemeral thoughts and feelings, from which he develops foundational theories on which to build relational material, reflective of his patients internal world. In doing so he establishes an intersubjective third analytic space and objects of consideration, between and around them both - inviting his patients' to collaborate.

He highlights the importance of noticing and collecting these intra-psychic bits-and-pieces from which one can construct a new space. A set of ideas in which the patient is invited to play a dialectic game, perhaps similar to a tennis match. The court and its observants being the analytic ground on which the match is being played.

He ask the question, “Let’s assume this person understands me in a particular way, now how is this patient communicating with me?” “Is he attuned to my subjectivity and/or is he communicating unconscious material via primitive means?” “Is he projecting his thoughts and feelings into me, for me to decipher for him?”

This tennis match with all of its inventory - the contest, the points, the lines, balls, net and umpire - become a third subjectivity - aside the subjectivity of analyst and patient as isolated individuals (or opponents). This match experienced and observed by both participants describes as, Winnicott (1960 in Ogden,1994) framed it, there being 'no such thing as an infant' without its mother. And so..

..there is 'no such thing as a tennis player, without an opponent to play against and no such thing as a patient, without a clinician.'

This third subjectivity he describes, "creates, negates and preserves" the tension in which the match is played; before, during and after time on court. The separateness, connectedness and willingness of both participants invites and maintains this third space, from which both might benefit.

I understood that he assumes the analytic third arises from an unconscious agreement between the participants. That such a space should develop, and that those thoughts and feelings arising in them both individually, are in part contributions, elicited from this third object or space.

In the case of the guest at the gathering, one can imagine only humour being the agreement for such collaboration, although a curious silence may offer a pause into something more intuitive.

The analyst is expected to be alert to his own thoughts and feelings such that he doesn’t trivialise or dispense with what might normally be considered irrelevant to the task metered by the patient. In other words, every thought or feeling becomes grist for the mill, no matter how tenuous. Reverie. Daydreaming. A thoughtfulness.

Writing this now, it reminds me of when one might disclose one’s profession to the same guest at this imaginary gathering. The title is often met with a phantasy that 'a mind is being read' somehow. Perhaps what is being understood is rather that the intricate details of how and what is being offered, are not simply dispensed with - but are considered relevant to the interaction .Throw-away comments, jokes and small talk holds far greater meaning to the encounter than we might otherwise understand it to have, given the setting. That one might be 'being too serious' or be 'taking everything seriously' in the context of what is both consciously and unconsciously offered. After all, psychotherapeutic encounters are widely considered odd. Not the usual style of interaction. Uncomfortable, fraught with emotion, silent and infused with hopes and expectations.

That said could the therapeutic style be considered ordinary if all of what is disclosed is actually taken seriously by both participants? Or, are normal social interactions normal, because discernment is present. Discernment in this instance being a willingness to put to one side thoughts and feelings which might otherwise impede the normal flow of conversation. To save them for later and discussion (gossip perhaps) with a confidant. Reflective function not for the individual in question, but safely produced for a third party to evaluate.

Perhaps this last point serves to draw a description of this third space. A third eye. A third vehicle; vesicle, object or mind. Something or someone to riff off and with. To help gauge feeling. Someone to help make sense of one’s intuition about an encounter; afterwards. Rather this, than to allow the guest to be party to the 'other' encounter one might be having with them, and for them to have their say?

1 Ogden, T, H. (1994) The Analytic Third: Working with Intersubjective Clinical Facts US. The International Journal of Psychoanalysis. (1994).