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Ofra Eshel has written a powerful, courageous, and original book that addresses the emotional demands of psychoanalytic encounters, the need for total “analytic oneness” when confronting the psychic terrors of extreme trauma, particularly preverbal trauma. She draws on the work of Wilfred Bion, Michael Eigen, D. W. Winnicott, and other psychoanalysts who have explored these psychic depths, which she integrates as she formulates her own approach from her own extensive and intensive clinical experience.
What does Eshel mean by oneness? She uses two terms, “presenting” and “withnessing,” that are essential for her understanding of analytic oneness. Presencing is simply “being there” (p. 1), and simply being there is truly complex, since it means being “within the patient's experiential world and within the grip of the analytic process, and the ensuing patient-analyst interconnectedness” (p. 1). For Eshel, that wonderfully simple and complex process leads to something even deeper. “Patient and analyst then form an emergent new entity of interconnectedness or ‘withnessing’ that goes beyond the confines of their separate subjectivities and the simple summation of the two—a two-in-oneness” (p. 1). She then takes a quantum leap, calling the process “quantum interconnectedness” (p. 1).
Yes, all the intricate depth of her originality and daring emerges on page 1, and the rest? The rest is her elaboration of these concepts with extensive clinical applications, extensive clinical examples, which are emotionally shattering and, ultimately, brilliantly illuminating. I choose that word “brilliantly” to highlight the intense light embedded in the word “illuminating.”
“Withnessing” is a compelling term: to be fully with. Yes, it also is a play on the word “witnessing,” but it goes beyond “witnessing.” Clearly analytic work involves being a witnessing presence, being someone whom the analysand can experience as someone deeply aware of what the analysand experienced, what the analysand f