On: Where are you, my Beloved? On Absence, Loss and the Enigma of Telepathic Dreams

Dear Editor

I would like to say a few words about Dr. Eshel's paper (2006), about its value and its place. It might be easier to begin with its place. For Stevens (1999), the poem originates from the fact that we live in a world that is not our own and is not of ourselves (see ‘Notes toward a supreme fiction': ‘From this the poem springs: that we live in a place/ That is not our own and, much more, not ourselves/ And hard it is in spite of blazoned days'). Eshel's paper originates where Stevens poetry originates: from an odd combination of terror, awe and wonderment. Its theme is unusual only in so far as we are in such need of the usual to comfort and console us. The author records what has taken place. She tells us that she does not know what to make of things but that she does know this much: that they happened. And her report is saturated with astonishment, wonder and uneasiness verging on a deeper discomfort. It is this capacity for openness to experience and for its registration that gives the paper its value, I think. Beyond topic or theme, the author shares an attitude that might be characterized as daring, one that goes with the registration of facts before they are shaped into a matrix of understanding of any sort or kind. And in a subtle but consistent manner Eshel manages to sustain this very attitude towards her theme: she is not suggesting mysticism, nor was she personally transformed. But she does relate a personal capacity, almost a need I would say, to dare and face things with openness of mind, which, in turn, opens the way for the undercurrents of amazement and awe which, to my mind, are this paper's deeper theme.

Bion transformed our notion of projective identification into a larger vision of the way we intuit ourselves into one another and into relationships, a realization that Eshel seems to appreciate fully. That we reach towards each other in ways that baffl e and surpass our understanding is thus the given out of which the author grafts the ex