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Roose finds in the words of T.S. Eliot a poetic reminder of the inevitable co-existence of both meaning and chaos, the one implying and requiring the other in the creation of psyche and world. In a welcome and (still) unusual self-revelatory style, she discusses her own struggle to come to acceptance of the persistent reality of chaotic ‘mad’ parts in herself and in her clients, noting their creative potential, the risks they pose, the fears they arouse, and the defences we and our clients erect against them.
Her discussion makes evident the tension at the heart of all depth psychological work and of the lives it hopes to redeem: that between the necessity to allow and enter the chaos in ourselves and with our patients if fundamental change is to occur, and the equal necessity to contain and perhaps even to limit our experiences of this realm.
Roose notes the importance of boundaries in the toleration of both normal developmental and reparative experiences of chaos, and she likens the nature of healthy boundary-setting to the structure and function of cellular membranes, whose mechanisms ‘permit adjustments for increased or decreased exchange with the environment in order to ensure survival’. As with the operations of the living cell, the boundary-setting involved in the creation of an analytical temenos must be well-defined without losing its flexibility, its responsiveness to the perceptions and experiences of the two people involved.
Within the appropriately developed temenos, a desideratum dependent upon the analyst's abilities both to tolerate incestuous union with the analysand and to maintain a sufficient degree of conscious observation of the processes unfolding, the animating energy of the spirit can stimulate the creation of order and the appearance of meanings specific to the patient. Roose discusses the limitations that can prevent these ideal developments, and concludes her article, most helpfully, with the consideration of a ten-year work, apparently stil