Finding Unconscious Fantasy in Narrative, Trauma, and Body Pain A Clinical Guide

Finding Unconscious Fantasy in Narrative, Trauma, and Body Pain: A Clinical Guide demonstrates that the concept of the unconscious is profoundly relevant for understanding the mind, psychic pain, and traumatic human suffering. Editors Paula L. Ellman and Nancy R. Goodman established this book to discover how symbolization takes place through the "finding of unconscious fantasy" in ways that mend the historic split between trauma and fantasy. Cases present the dramatic encounters between patient and therapist when confronting discovery of the unconscious in the presence of trauma and body pain, along with narrative.

Unconscious fantasy has a central role in both clinical and theoretical psychoanalysis. This volume is a guide to the workings of the dyad and the therapeutic action of "finding" unconscious meanings. Staying close to the clinical engagement of analyst and patient shows the transformative nature of the "finding" process as the dyad works with all aspects of the unconscious mind. Finding Unconscious Fantasy in Narrative, Trauma, and Body Pain: A Clinical Guide uses the immediacy of clinical material to show how trauma becomes known in the "here and now" of enactment processes and accompanies the more symbolized narratives of transference and countertransference. This book features contributions from a rich variety of theoretical traditions illustrating working models including Klein, Arlow, and Bion and from leaders in the fields of narrative, trauma, and psychosomatics. Whether working with narrative, trauma or body pain, unconscious fantasy may seem out of reach. Attending to the analyst/ patient process of finding the derivatives of unconscious fantasy offers a potent roadmap for the way psychoanalytic engagement uncovers deep layers of the mind.

In focusing on the places of trauma and psychosomatic concreteness, along with narrative, Finding Unconscious Fantasy in Narrative, Trauma, and Body Pain: A Clinical Guide shows the vitality of "finding" unconscious fantasy and its effect in initiating a symbolizing process. Chapters in this book bring to life the sufferings and capacities of individual patients with actual verbatim process material demonstrating how therapists and patients discover and uncover the derivatives of unconscious fantasy. Finding the unconscious meanings in states of trauma, body expressions, and transference/countertransference enactments becomes part of the therapeutic dialogue between therapists and patients unraveling symptoms and allowing transformations. Learning how therapeutic work progresses to uncover unconscious fantasy will benefit all therapists and students of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy interested to know more about the psychoanalytic dialogue.

Chapter One: Paula L. Ellman and Nancy R. Goodman Finding unconscious fantasy

Chapter Two: Nancy R. Goodman The “Finding Theater”: a schema for finding unconscious fantasy

Chapter Three: Paula L. Ellman Finding unconscious fantasy: Contact and therapeutic action

Chapter Four: Werner Bohlebor The psychoanalytic treatment of an adult patient traumatized in early childhood"

Chapter Five: Nancy R. Goodman The impossible and the possible: finding unconscious fantasy dimensions in Werner Bohleber’s case of Mr. A

Chapter Six: Elias M da Rocha Barros and Elizabeth L. da Rocha Barros Unconscious phantasy: discussion of Werner Bohleber’s case

Chapter Seven: Paula L. Ellman A Soma case of pain

Chapter Eight: Marilia Aisenstein Painful transference and pains of transference: discussion of Paula Ellman’s case

Chapter Nine: Batya Monder Discussion of Dr. Paula Ellman’s case

Chapter Ten: Irene Cairo Babette, interrupted

Chapter Eleven: Harriet I. Basseches Discussion of Dr. Irene Cairo's case: Babette, interrupted

Chapter Twelve: Catalina Bronstein Noises and voices: discussion on Babette, interrupted"

Chapter Thirteen: Janice S. Lieberman Not quite a princess

Chapter Fourteen: Carolyn S. Ellman Mirror, mirror on the wall: who’s the fairest of us all? Comments on Janice Lieberman’s case : "Not quite a princess"

Chapter Fifteen: Ilany Kogan The broken doll: discovering the unconscious fantasy in the case of Karen

Chapter Sixteen: Dori Laub and Nanette C. Auerhahn Unconscious traumatic fantasy

Chapter Seventeen: Robert Oelsner The dawn of unconscious phantasy

Chapter Eighteen: Arlene Kramer Richards Fantasy and trauma

Chapter Nineteen: Rogelio Sosnik Searching unconscious phantasy

Paula L. Ellman, Ph.D., ABPP, is a training and supervising analyst in the Contemporary Freudian Society Washington, DC Program and the International Psychoanalytical Association. She is a Member of the Committee on Women and Psychoanalysis of the IPA (COWAP), a Board Member of the North America Psychoanalytic Confederation (NAPsaC) representing CFS, and Visiting Professor at the Sino-American raining Project in Wuhan China. She has written and presented in the areas of female psychology, enactment, terror and sadomasochism. She has a private practice in psychotherapy and psychoanalysis in North Bethesda, Maryland and Washington, DC.

Nancy R. Goodman, Ph.D., is a training and supervising analyst with the Contemporary Freudian Society, Washington, DC Program and the International Psychoanalytic Association. She publishes on the topics of psychic trauma, female development, sadomasochism, and witnessing processes and is Director of the Virtual Psychoanalytic Museum, www.virtualpsychoanalyticmuseum.org.She maintains a psychoanalytic practice in Bethesda, MD.