All human experience is organized in the dynamic space between necessity and contingency, and these values play a significant role in therapeutic issues such as human encounters, trauma, racism, physical disease, accidents and minority experience. How can we help patients who live amidst the inevitable contingencies and necessities that create the human world and human tragedies? Through a case vignette of a traumatized female patient, I attempt to explore how the therapist’s recognition of being a player-witness – the recognition that I could have been my patient – can help both the therapist and patient to share the transience of the world and hope for the future. I conclude that the sense of surprise, guilt and shame – that comes with the therapist’s realization that there is no reason why the trauma experienced by the patient could not have happened to them – allows the therapist, and patient, to be open to many other possibilities in their lives.
Koichi Togashi
Koichi Togashi, Ph.D., L.P., is a certified clinical psychologist in Japan and a licensed psychoanalyst in the State of New York. He is a member of the faculty, and training & supervising analyst at TRISP, New York, and a professor at Konan University, Kobe, Japan. He is a member of the Council of the International Association of Psychoanalytic Self Psychology, and an international editor of Psychoanalysis, Self and Context, an editor of Psychoanalytic inquiry. He is also a member of the Executive Board of the Japan Psycho-Analytical Association, and an editor of The Japanese Journal of Psycho-Analysis. He has published numerous books and articles in Intersubjectivity and Contemporary Self Psychology in the US, Japan, and Taiwan. He co-authored the book, “Kohut’s Twinship across Cultures: The Psychology of Being Human” from Routledge in 2015, and won the Gradiva Award in 2020 for his new book, “The Psychoanalytic Zero: A Decolonizing Study of Therapeutic Dialogues.
Peter Zimmermann
Peter Zimmermann, PhD, LP, is a Founding Member of TRISP, the Training and Research in Intersubjective Self Psychology Foundation in New York, where he is a Member of the Board of Directors, Senior Faculty, and Training and Supervising Analyst. He is the former President (2016-2021) of the Training Institute of NPAP, the National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis in New York, and is a Member of the Board of Directors, Senior Member, Training and Supervising Analyst, and Faculty Member. He is on the Editorial Board of The Psychoanalytic Review. He is co-editor and contributing author of Intersubjective Self Psychology: A Primer (Routledge 2019), and guest editor of and contributing author to the Special Issue of The Psychoanalytic Review on Kohut, Vol 108, Number 2, June 2021. He has been in private practice in New York City since 1982. In addition to working with individuals and couples, he provides private supervision and runs study groups in Intersubjective Self Psychology.
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