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.
To be able to break down the barrier of space between self and other, yet at the same time to be able to maintain it, this seems to be the paradox of creativity. (Milner 1950, p. 144)
In this paper I hope to explore the idea of the ‘space between’ in relation to episodes with two patients and, in particular, to my constant struggle to find the ‘right’ space for the creation of what has never been, of what Jung has called the scintilla, the ‘little soul-spark’ (Jung 1955, p. 48). In thinking about this, I am struck by how very different is my ‘position’ in relation to certain patients. There are those with whom I feel fairly comfortable with the way we hold together in terms of how I am able to keep track of what is going on. But there are those, whose ego boundaries are much more fragile, with whom I seem to join up in a turbulence in which there is a searching for what seems to be an archetypal ‘mating’ in the service of a birth of what has never been. In these experiences of participation mystique or projective identification, I lose track of myself. This is well documented in the literature (Gordon 1965; Samuels et al. 1968). But I also become aware of what seems to be a consistent yet extreme difference in the feel to this turmoil-that is my countertransference position. At one extreme it feels as if I am leaning forwards, letting the patient know I am there, fearful he might slip away, cold and forgotten. At the other, it is as though I lean backwards in order to give space, fearful of intruding, wary of the delicate and potentially explosive space between us. What I am picking up from the patient accords with Balint's ideas about ocnophilia and philobatism to which I will return later (Balint 1968).
This countertransference position leads me to think in terms of reconstruction and of a dimension to either side of a ‘good enough’ space. To the one side lies impingement, to the other abandonment. And yet these two extremes often intermingle and even jo