Intuition and The Ineffable: Listening in Body
All journeys have secret dimensions of which the traveler is unaware.
– Martin Buber
Listen to me as one listens to the rain,
Not attentive, not distracted,
Light footsteps, thin drizzle,
Water that is air, air that is time…Listen to me as one listens to the rain,
Without listening, hear what I say
With eyes open inward, asleep
With all 5 senses awake…– Octavio Paz (1975)
Photo Art credits: Artist: Janet Oakes | Both Sides Now 2019 Acrylic
Bion refers to intuition as the Seventh Pillar of Wisdom. (R. Kipling)
This series of seminars will explore the concept of intuition and its link with the ineffable through embodied experience. Intuition comes from the Latin intuitio meaning “to see,” to look upon”. It evokes the somatic experience of immediacy, intensity, turbulence, electricity, danger, the uncanny or monstrous. It may bring us face to face with that which we are unprepared to recognize or prefer not to see with our external and/or metaphorical eye.
Our field of study and inquiry will include:
- How do we encourage and develop our intuitive abilities?
- How do we develop faith in our intuition as a vital agent of analytic change.
- How do we encourage catastrophic “chance” or opportunity through intuitive sensibilities?
- Is it possible individually to access the ineffable, that infinite storehouse of potential analytic vitality and resource through tuning our ‘eye’ to receive somatically something immediately real and true?
- Does the aesthetic model directed toward the imaginative and intuitive offer elements of technique that may be transformative somatically as well as ontologically.
Format:
Theoretical discussion of papers applying concepts from the theory; 10 min break around midpoint and a segment in the last hour for ‘clinical moments’ in which we encourage participants to bring forward a clinical moment. Participants will be invited to think about, discuss and experiment with their own unique intuitive sense in relation to the readings and to their clinical experience. Readings have been chosen to facilitate this exploration. The seminars are not meant as an attempt to define the ineffable or our intuitive experience but to kindle or even ignite our eye (I) both inner and outer. The purpose of our venture is designed to draw us away from the security and certainty of what we know or have learned and toward the unbidden arrival of the unexpected.
Registration for this course is now closed.
Please email info@wbcps.org if you are interested in late registration.
Course Outline:
Session 1: October 27, 2022
Faculty: Catherine Young, PhD, FIPA, Janet Oakes, MA, BC-ATP, FIPA
Bergstein, A. (2019). Transcending The Caesura: Reverie, dreaming and counterdreaming. In Bion and Meltzer”s Expeditions into Unmapped Mental Life.(pp. 28-54).
Session 2: November 24, 2022
Faculty: Catherine Young, PhD, FIPA, Janet Oakes, MA, BC-ATP, FIPA
Harrang, C. (2022). River to rapids: speaking to the body in terms the body can understand. In Body as Psychoanalytic Object. (pp. 134-155).
Session 3: January 26, 2023
Faculty: Catherine Young, PhD, FIPA, Janet Oakes, MA, BC-ATP, FIPA
Goldberg, P. (2022). Embodiment, dissociation and the rhythm of life. In Body as Psychoanalytic Object. (pp.118-133).
Session 4: February 23, 2023
Faculty: Catherine Young, PhD, FIPA, Janet Oakes, MA, BC-ATP, FIPA
Winnicott, D. (1949). Mind and Its relation to the psyche-soma. In Through Paediatrics to Psycho-Analysis. (pp. 243-254).
Session 5: March 30, 2023
Faculty: Catherine Young, PhD, FIPA, Janet Oakes, MA, BC-ATP, FIPA
Pistiner de Cortinas, L. (2019). Tropisms – at-one-ment and mental growth. In Explorations in Bion’s O. (pp.79-87).
Session 6: April 27, 2023
Faculty: Catherine Young, PhD, FIPA, Janet Oakes, MA, BC-ATP, FIPA
Eshel, O. (2019) A beam of “chimeric darkness”. In The Emergence of Analytic Oneness. (pp. 92-116)
Session 7: May 25, 2023
Faculty: Catherine Young, PhD, FIPA, Janet Oakes, MA, BC-ATP, FIPA
Eigen, M. (2011). Tears of Pain and Beauty: mixed voices. In Contact With The Depths.
Music and Psychoanalysis. In Contact With The Depths. Pp. 117
Session 8: June 29, 2023
Faculty: Catherine Young, PhD, FIPA, Janet Oakes, MA, BC-ATP, FIPA
Civitarese, G. (2021) Bion’s Graph of “In Search of Existence”. The American Journal of Psychoanalysis.
