You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
In his paper, “A Question of Voice in Poetry and Psychoanalysis” (1998), Thomas Ogden writes that as readers, we must allow poetry to be absorbed as a complete entity — to be “impressed by how the poem works — what its language does as opposed to merely what it says” (p. 61, my emphasis). The same is true for Ogden's own writing, in which his unique, moving voice and the precision and rhythm of his words integrate theory, therapy, and literature, “impressing” the reader. In other words, his writing simply “works,” creating an experience for the reader. In his 11th book, Reclaiming Unlived Life: Experiences in Psychoanalysis (2016), Ogden continues his long-term quest into the essence of the analytic encounter, with its distinctive quality created by the analyst, the patient, the language, and the music born out of this microcosm.
Reclaiming Unlived Life is a statement about the essence of psychoanalysis. It delves into the processes of revival and reclaiming supported by a deep, dedicated intersubjective platform for intuiting psychic truth. In this book, as always, Ogden's thinking is an invitation for self-investigation and creativity. In that effort, I will describe some of his ideas in this book and how they echo in my therapeutic work.
In the opening chapter, “Truth and Psychic Change,” Ogden introduces
… the idea that each patient brings to analysis — almost always without the words and ideas with which to state it — the feeling that he or she has … died in infancy or childhood, or perhaps at a later stage of life — and hopes that work with the analyst will help him or her to reclaim his or her “unlived life”…. We all have unlived aspects of our lives derived from early life events that were too painful for us to experience … [and] we are all the time engaged in unconscious psychological work in the act of dreaming — both while awake and asleep, both on our own and with others — that is of help to us in becoming better able to encompass formerly unlived aspects o