Let It Be and Become Me: Notes on Containing, Identification, and the Possibility of Being

The author uses Bion's description of containing (1959) as a basis for her own way of understanding and developing the essentials of the containing process, through and within the analytic experience. The emphasis is on the ontological dimension of experience. The author argues that the crucial step at the heart of the process, between projective identification at its onset and the patient's introjective identification later on, is the analyst's experiencing being-in-identification with the patient's projected, threatening, painful experiences; the analyst thus actually lets them in and processes them within his or her own emotional experience. This is referred to as “I-dentification,” experiencing vicarious experience, and the ensuing possibility of being. Containing thus evolves through patient and analyst's converging, deep interconnectedness and interpenetrating impact on each other, forming a conjoint, living, therapeutic entity in which the analyst's psyche is used as an area of experiencing and transformation for the patient's expelled, unbearable experiences. The author also suggests that the identificatory, in-depth understanding of the patient is achieved by the analyst's staying as connected as possible to the patient's emotional experience. This view of containing and the analyst's experiential-emotional identification (and the difficulties encountered in the process) are illustrated by four clinical examples.