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.
This book is an engaging and enriching exploration of a key Jungian term which is often overlooked. It is a concept that one often thinks one has grasped and integrated. On reading this panoramic spread of papers one becomes aware of the generative significance and clinical usefulness that a full understanding of this concept brings. Moreover, as the more psychoanalytically based authors demonstrate, participation mystique may well be the area of intersection between analytical psychology and broader psychoanalytic thinking. The result is a comprehensive sense of how the concept is understood and utilized by contemporary analysts. The chapters are arranged in three groups: 1. Clinical Applications; 2. Experiential Narratives; and 3. Theoretical Discussions.
Participation mystique bears a close similarity to projective identification, which was originally described by Melanie Klein but developed significantly after her. The terms are not identical: ‘projective identification’ may be more defensive and communicative, but it is the nature of subject-object fusion that provides the significant area of potential interest. The convergence is situated in the sense of the powerful impact of projective processes, and the manner in which they are absorbed and become part of the therapist's bodily and emotional sense. This intersection provides the underpinning for many chapters, in particularly those by Pamela Power, Marcus West and Robert Waska. In Power's excellent paper, she demonstrates how these states may be necessary to reach unconscious factors which have to be worked through. She emphasizes that anti-life, anti-growth factors are inevitably part of human experience and that engagement with this psychic toxicity in analysis is essential. She highlights two clinical manifestations of this, namely negative pairings and sado-masochistic interpersonal constellations. In his article, ‘Trauma, participation mystique, projective identification and analytic attitude’, West pro