Toward and Away from the Light: Some Thoughts on Seeing in Therapy

While taking a brief nap between sessions and at the border of consciousness, or the so-called hypnagogic state, a wild dog figment suddenly spiraled into my dozing gaze. With jaw and paws expanding—oddly, I didn't feel fear but instead an insulated excitement of desire. The image lacked obvious relation to my immediate personal life, so I wondered about my patients, then the one I was about to meet with.

After the initial greeting with Jane, I swerved from our usual protocol, and abruptly informed her I had a question, playfully asking, “What is your favorite wild animal?” Despite the out-of-the-blue nature of my question, Jane cooperated with the fundamental rule and spontaneously replied, “elephants.” She seemed perplexed by this answer. I was also surprised. The cute character of the animal seemed misfitting with her blunt and aggressive nature.

Seeing in the Future Tense, Countertransference and Reverie

In Webster's essay (2023), “I'll See You There,” the reader learns that the title is a line she wrote down in a note to a patient during a dream. In a session later that week, the line turned out to be what the patient needed to hear for help with his doubt about having committed to analysis. Webster describes this dream event as “Seeing in the future tense.” Her phrase provides a poetic utility that cogently underscores and gives tranquility to a grammar of clinically sensing the unknowns of the narrative. The intervention, “I'll see you there,” expressing faith in a future time and place of seeing-and-being-seen, distills a primary need that patients unconsciously seek from therapy. Though, what constitutes seeing in this case is just as elusive as how they expressive their need for the unknown. Like the child who is mystified by the growing up process, patients crave a concerned parent who doesn't quite know (see) what their child needs in order to make that next developmental leap, but the parent does have the desire to tunef