The Non-Verbal Dimension in Psychoanalysis: ‘State’ and Its Clinical Vicissitudes

The author focuses on state, a particular and continuing dimension of non-verbal expression which, though generally seen, heard or felt, often remains implicit. Basic, primal, reflecting psyche and soma woven together, state lies in a direct link with our earliest beginnings. Conveying one's affect, the sense of one's body—of one's self—in relationship to oneself and to the outer world, it influences and is influenced by the presence of the other. Thus, a change in state may be an early cue of the experiential effect of a perception, reflecting the impact of another's felt participation—including that other's state—the place from which we may truly find ourselves as participant-observers. State illuminates our unceasing subjectivity. In its subtle manifestation, it offers an added ‘royal road’ to what is yet unconscious, opening vital pathways of psychic experience that might otherwise have remained unnoted. Brought to collaborative and explicit focus, state can be mutually observed, and enquiry as to its meaning undertaken. It can be verbalised, and it can be analysed. Further, in sharpening our observance of nuances of data, attention to state will deepen consideration of the nature of our analytic evidence. Clinical examples are offered in elaboration of these ideas.