Auto-Sensuous Shapes: Prototypes for Creative Forms

The American Journal of Psychoanalysis, Vol. 61, No. 3, September 2001 (2001)

AUTO-SENSUOUS SHAPES: PROTOTYPESFOR CREATIVE FORMS

Marilyn Charles, Ph.D.

The author looks at some of the more normative, adaptive, and creative aspects of what havebeen called ‘autistic’ or ‘auto-sensuous’ shapes by Tustin and others. She explores the con-struct from several frameworks, including the literature on early sensory experience and thaton the empathic attunement between infant and caretaker in which interpersonal rhythms andmeanings are built. The views of Bion and Matte-Blanco are utilized to help explore the pro-cesses by which meaning is created from experience, while the works of Segal and Milner areused to focus more explicitly on the role of symbol formation in the creative process. Finally, itis suggested that these auto-sensuous shapes can become prototypes for creative endeavours,including the creative process we call psychoanalysis. The author uses examples from herown experience in deriving pattern from basic sensory experience, toward the creation ofpoetry, drawings, and the establishment of attunement and ‘meaning-making’ within the ana-lytic setting.

KEY WORDS: creativity; symbolization; symbol formation; Bion; Matte-Blanco; Milner.

I have written previously about how patterned experience appears to lit-erally ‘become self’ and also becomes enacted as themes that play out inour lives over time (Charles, 1999a). In this paper, I highlight one type ofpatterned experience, which has been referred to as ‘autistic’ or ‘auto-sen-suous’ shapes by Tustin (1984, 1991) and others. This is depicted as a formof ‘unmentalized experience’ (Mitrani, 1995) utilized toward self-soothing,which is often libidinally charged.1 Although the original depiction of theconcept came from the literature on autistic processes and has thereby be-come embedded in a pathological frame, I intend to explore the moreadaptive, normative, and creative aspects of this particular manifestation ofunconscious phantasy. I will begin by looking at the construct itself, explor-ing it from the dual frames of the literature on autism and on early empathicattunement between infant and caregiver. The work of Bion (1962, 1963)and of Matte-Blanco (1975, 1988) will be used to help explore the pro-cesses whereby meaning is created from experience, while the work ofSegal (1957) and Milner (1987) will be used to focus more explicitly on theprocesses of symbol formation in the service of creativity. I will also explore

Address correspondence to Marilyn Charles, Ph.D., 325 Wildwood Drive, East Lansing, MI48823-3154; e-mail: [email protected].

2390002-9548/01/0900-0239$19.50/1 2001 Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis

240 CHARLES

how these autistic shapes can become prototypes for creative endeavours,including that process we call psychoanalysis. Finally, I will use examplesfrom my own experience in deriving pattern from basic sensory experience,toward the creation of drawings, poetry, and the establishment of attune-ment and meaning-making within the analytic setting.

EARLY INFANT EXPERIENCES AND ‘AUTISTIC SHAPES’

Early phantasy arises in the sensory experiences of the infant, emergingfrom basic experiences of comfort and discomfort (Isaacs, 1948). The abilityto be comfortable with both self and other depends on one’s sense of ca-pacity within the environment (Milner, 1952/1987), derived from the earlyability to evoke resonance from the mother.2 The literature on autism delin-eates one form of self-soothing at its pathological extreme, wherein thecapacity for symbol formation has been diminished and we see largely itsprecursors. Optimally, the mother contains the anxiety of the child suffi-ciently to facilitate movements toward autonomous function. However,when separation occurs too soon, the illusion of union may evoke a senseof chaos, and separation may become a rigid need invoked to avoid thatincipient sense of chaos (Milner, 1952/1987). Babies who have not hadsufficient ‘holding’ (Winnicott, 1971) or ‘containment’ (Bion, 1962, 1963)to facilitate the development of their own capacities for self-soothing andself-containment (Schore, 1994) may be missing what Tustin (1986) hasreferred to as the ‘rhythm of safety.’

With no responsive mother to moderate affect at positive and negativeends to keep the infant from becoming overwhelmed, the infant is at themercy of her own extremes of experience, caught between the Scylla ofunbridled enjoyment and the Charybdis of unmitigated despair. There ismost often no clear verbal narrative recording these early failures; memo-ries of very early experiences, occurring before the acquisition of language,become stored within the body and are expressed as sensations rather thanin more highly elaborated symbolic form (Innes-Smith, 1987). Therefore,our understanding of these failures and their ramifications for individualdevelopment are often based on conjectures elaborated upon the constric-tions experienced by our patients in their efforts to make meaning and de-rive enjoyment from their being-in-the-world. These conjectures are oftenbased on sensations occasioned by interactions with the patient.

The analyst attunes her self to the patient, much as the mother synchro-nizes her rhythms to those of her infant; this ability appears to be crucialfor positive attachment (Anzieu, 1993; Stern, 1985). The most primary ex-periences are body experiences, as Freud (1923) has noted: “the ego is first

PROTOTYPES FOR CREATIVE FORMS 241

and foremost a bodily ego” (p. 26). Even before the caesura of birth, thereare multiple months of experiences impinging themselves upon the fetus’sdeveloping sensoria. Tustin (1969) described the infant’s state of being as a‘stream of sensations.’ Alternatively, “in earliest days, the infant is thestream of sensations from which constructs gradually emerge as namelessentities. As some degree of separateness is tolerated, the infant may besaid to interpret the world in terms of these nameless entities which areconstellations of sensation” (Tustin, 1969, p. 32).

According to Anzieu (1979, 1984, 1993), the earliest communicationsbetween infant and mother are of sound, rhythm, and of skin on skin, inwhich mother and infant are not yet differentiated; one is felt to be the‘other side’ of the other. This relationship is invoked as the child rubs selfagainst self, imitating, and thereby invoking, this sense of merger of selfwith other. The infant’s resources are limited, focused primarily on survivaland secondarily on exploration of the environment, an important concomi-tant of survival, unless the external realities are intolerable (Fairbairn, 1952;Guntrip, 1989). In the absence of a good enough environmental container,there may arise an essential lack of containing function (which Bick [1968]terms a ‘psychic skin’) on the part of certain infants. Without these bound-aries, the infant is unable to contain self or psychic contents, creating aterrible void in which neither ideas nor meaning can be held. The selfcannot hold self; experience itself cannot be contained, leaving no groundupon which to build (Eigen, 1998; Winnicott, 1974). Meaning seeps away(Anzieu, 1984), leading to fears of unintegration, seen as prior to and moreprimitive than fears of disintegration, echoing back to fears of being depen-dent in the face of an undependable other (Symington, 1985). Symingtonsuggests that the infant remediates this terror by focusing “attention on asensory stimulus—visual, auditory, tactile, or olfactory. When his attentionis held by this stimulus, he feels held together” (p. 481).

CONTAINING FUNCTIONS IN THE EARLY INFANT ENVIRONMENT

In the early months of life, dating from conception, there is little differen-tiation between somatic and psychic functions (Mancia, 1981). The fetalworld is ordered through the sensory experiences that impinge from bothexternal and internal sources; responses to stimuli associated with tactile,pressure, kinaesthetic, thermic, pain, vestibular, taste, and visual (light/dark)senses have all been found in the fifth to sixth month of fetal development(Mancia, 1981). The interactive rhythmicity between fetus and mother be-comes the context within which the infant develops. This rhythmicity in-cludes the mother’s mental and emotional world, transmitted to the infant

242 CHARLES

through many modalities, including hormonal and neuroendocrine means,as well as the rhythmicity of heartbeat and blood pressure, the quality ofvoice, and the relative tension of the containing body. As develop-ment proceeds, bringing greater levels of complexity, rhythmicity and con-stancy become the principles by which the world is ‘decoded’ (Mancia,1981).

The biological and psychical become increasingly differentiated overtime. However, in the absence of ‘good enough’ mothering, this process isimpeded. Whether driven primarily by infant need or environmental insuffi-ciency, deficits may lead to an impaired ability to hold one’s self within theworld. The mother, as container, moderates the child’s experiences, opti-mally challenging the child just enough to facilitate the emerging capacityfor self-holding and self-soothing. Disturbances in this emerging containingfunction may lead to deficits; the infant’s receptivity becomes a danger tothe extent that there is insufficient capacity to moderate incoming sensoryexperiences. An effective barrier then becomes the best course for survival.In the absence of a responsive external environment, patterned movementhaving to do with rhythmicity or tonus may represent attempts to supple-ment or sustain what is experienced as an inadequate ‘skin’ or self-holdingfunction (Mancia, 1981; Symington, 1985).

Early memories are not easily accessible to conscious awareness, butrather become stored within the body. Affective memory, in particular, ap-pears to exist prior to, and to some extent separate from, cognitive memory,thereby exerting an influence on secondary processes whether or not theaffect becomes conscious (Krystal, 1988). Bodily memories may be ex-pressed in numerous ways, including repetitive patterned movements. Al-though these types of ‘primitive communications’ (McDougall, 1974) maybe difficult to understand, they may also be extremely useful toward further-ing our understanding of nonverbal memories and unconscious phantasies.However, both symbol formation and communication depend on the abil-ity to transform these sensory and affective experiences in movements fromprimary process to the greater integration involved in secondary elabora-tion. As patterned movements become further elaborated, they may per-form important communicative functions and further our understanding.Becoming attentive to the variousness of signals of affective memory canfacilitate greater conscious awareness and integration of disparate and dis-owned experiences.

PRIMARY EXPERIENCE AND AUTO-SENSUOUS SHAPES

Ogden (1989) postulates an ‘autistic-contiguous’ position, described asdevelopmentally prior to Klein’s ‘paranoid-schizoid’ position. It is charac-


terized as a primitive mode of being, sensation-dominated and presymbolic(Ogden, 1989), the domain of what Klein (1957/1975) has described aspreverbal ‘memories in feelings,’ which are highly elusive to verbal repre-sentations, and yet may contain important information as to how the psy-chic world is ordered and the external world understood. These memoriesmay take the form of auto-sensuous shapes, depicted by Tustin (1984) as“early pre-symbolic mental phenomena” (p. 288), unlinked bits of sensoryexperience, termed ‘beta-elements’ by Bion (1962, 1967). It is just at thepoint where the child is beginning to organize body experiences toward thedistinction of self and not-self that there is a propensity for “the formation ofprimary ‘shapes’ which offset the randomness of the flux of sensation whichconstitutes the infant’s early sense of being” (Innes-Smith, 1987, p. 411). Inthe course of normal development, these primary shapes are confluencesof sensation that, as they become related to the shapes of actual objects inthe world, form the basis for object relations. The secure ‘container’ ap-pears to be essential for the process of separation, and with it the rudimentsof meaning-making, to occur. When experiences are insufficiently con-tained or moderated, the sensation itself may become objectified and some-what rigid, obstructing the child’s ability to form meaningful relations withexternal objects.

Bick (1968) notes that the failure to integrate a sense of one’s self asbeing contained can result in the development of a ‘second skin’ or falseself. This second skin is then utilized in the service of integrative and orga-nizational processes toward the establishment of a more cohesive and co-herent self. “The individual may pay a high price for this adaptation interms of fluidity and responsivity, . . . ” developing a pseudo-independentfalse self with rigid defenses as substitutes for the more fluid containingfunction of the skin (Bick, 1968). External objects, as well as parts of theself, can be utilized toward this end in the forms of repetitive touching,muscle tension, or skin rubbing against skin in a rhythmic fashion. Any ofthese can become the affirmation of containment in patterned (and there-fore meaning-ful) forms—the rudiments of integrative processes. Depend-ing on their further elaboration, or lack thereof, these processes may or maynot become ‘meaningful’ in the sense in which the term is most often used.Self-containing enactments such as these can remain unmentalized andpreclude awareness, as would appear to be the case in autism. However,they also provide the rudiments of meaning; early experiences that are inac-cessible to verbal memory may, at times, be accessed through the elabora-tion of this type of sensorimotor patterning—‘memories in feeling.’

Affirming observations by Freud (1900), Isaacs (1948), and others regard-ing the essential nature of the unconscious events or phantasies that under-lie all mental processes, the developmental literature alludes to generalized

244 CHARLES

episodes that are abstracted from specific occurrences and become proto-typical expectations against which all later occurrences are gauged (Stern,1985). This generalization, or pattern, becomes a meaningful structure,which can be modified, further elaborated, or encapsulated—dependingon the individual’s later experiences and how and whether they can beintegrated. Patterns may be extrapolated according to more or less complexsets of relationships. To the extent that they are abstracted from the originalexperiences, they may be less accessible to consensual meanings. Thischaracteristic is seen in primary process material in which the symbols tendto be highly idiosyncratic, thereby best interpreted by the individual him- orherself until some other becomes familiar enough with these idiosyncraticpatternings that their interpretations are more likely to be meaningful, ashappens over time in analysis. Narrative, or ‘episodic,’ memory is an out-growth of experience that is reliable enough to be able to form and modifygeneralized conceptions in an ongoing fashion, wherein the sense of a‘core’ or cohesive self in relation to a coherent other is formed (Stern,1985).

Many authors have noted that the autistic, or essentially self-focused,piece is an aspect of personality more generally, rather than being associ-ated with some specific pathology or deficit (cf. Ogden, 1989). The capac-ity to take in sensory information at a very basic level, and to form impres-sions through the patternings of this data, is the foundation upon which isbuilt all later learning. Our basic equilibrium within the environment de-pends on our ability to take in sensory data and to order it in a coherentfashion—to ‘make sense’ of it. This primary level of experience tends to beassociated with basic survival issues. Intense fear elicits freezing; effortstoward recovery initially tend to focus on ‘bringing one’s self back to life.’Much as we might rub our hands to bring back the circulation in a frozenlimb, we ‘rub’ our surfaces more generally in attempts to soothe ourselves,using repetitive or rhythmic actions towards this end.

Primitive feelings of great need and dependency, in the face of fears thatthese will not be met, tend to elicit avoidant defences on the surface. How-ever, patterns of behaviour, whether overt or covert, will also be set inmotion that will move towards soothing. S. Klein (1980) has noted thatthese types of repetitive autistic phenomena also occur in ‘neurotic’ adults,brought on by intense anxieties and fears of unintegration. These defensesmay take on diverse forms. For example, words themselves may be used asa means of defense rather than communication—to remain separate ratherthan to establish contact (S. Klein, 1980; Smith, 1990). Unlinking becomesthe denial of meaning, which can be another use of these auto-sensuousshapes. In the circumscribed elaboration of form may lie either a searchfor, or a denial of, meaning.


DEVELOPMENT OF SYMBOLIC CAPACITY: THE IMPORTANCE OF ADEQUATE‘HOLDING’ OR ‘CONTAINMENT’

With the development of our symbolic functions, we tend to rely moreheavily on language than sensory experience in our conscious attempts tomake sense of the world. Our more primary movements toward under-standing shift to the background and become, to some extent, disowned.We are often surprised by nonverbal understandings and have developedrubrics, such as ‘insight’ or ‘psychic powers’ as putative explanatory mech-anisms, which actually do little save to place the eminently comprehensiblebeyond our comprehension. We ‘remember’ the patterns built up throughthe impingements on our sensory apparatus, although they may be toocomplex to be comprehended fully in the moment (Charles, 1999a).

The foundations for these patterns are built in early dyadic interactionsin which the infant depends on the other for regulation of somatic andaffective states. Sufficient responsiveness, along with some nonrespon-siveness, builds both safety and frustration tolerance, the rudiments of thechild’s own developing capacity for self-regulation. Meaning, too, is cre-ated in these early interactions, in the affective attunement and responsive-ness of self and other (Stern, 1985). Failures in this regard appear to becomehard-wired into the neuroanatomy of the developing child, impeding subse-quent growth, particularly in terms of the capacity for self-regulation ofaffect (Schore, 1994). The two strands of regulatory capacity and meaningbecome inextricably intertwined; the overly stressed child cannot afford totake in new information as freely as the child who is not similarly burdened.

Overwhelming affect precludes the scanning for information that enablesus to make sense of our experience. However, it is also important to beable to remain sufficiently isolated and detached from one’s experiencesto avoid becoming overwhelmed by the assaultive intrusion of the other(Grotstein, 1980). In addition to the self-containing and unifying functionsof the protective skin, it also serves as a ‘stimulus barrier’ (Krystal, 1988),which functions as a protective psychic barrier and also as a filter thatmakes symbolic representation possible (Anzieu, 1984). To this end, theautistic shape becomes a magic talisman by which this screen may beevoked and kept in place. It becomes a filter (Anzieu, 1984) or ‘beta-screen’(Bion, 1962), a means for unlinking words and de-real-izing whatever can-not be realized without overwhelming the resources of the self.

The screen has its own form, which comes to carry meaning, as do themultiple sensory elements absorbed by our senses. Gomberoff, Noemi, andDe Gomberoff (1990) suggest that prior to the consolidation of the separate-ness of self and other, the forerunners of mental representations “becomeimprinted in the organism, . . . forming very primitive mosaics, which have

246 CHARLES

been conceptualized as autistic, of primitive or primary identification” (p.249). Auto-sensuous shapes may also be seen as precursors of transitionalobjects, which “stand for the nipple, and are based on tactile sensations ofcontinuity” (Gaddini, 1987, p. 324). Gaddini suggests that the loss of theprecursor is tantamount to the loss of self, as there is as yet insufficientorganization to allow mourning. One might imagine that the search forsoothing becomes a search for the ‘me’ in the presence of the ‘not-me,’which evokes annihilation/abandonment anxieties. The need for contact—such as may be seen in autistic shapes, thumb-sucking, or other auto-sen-sual experience—becomes a search for some means for filling the sense ofself (Gaddini, 1987). I would contend that the utilization of form becomesone mode of relief in this ongoing search for soothing.

The multimodal nature of experience expands the potentialities forachieving self-soothing. Stern (1985) cites research that affirms the abilityof infants to recognize cross-modal equivalencies. Equivalence implies re-flexivity, symmetry, and transitivity, which is not the same as identity(Matte-Blanco, 1975). It is, rather, a more highly elaborated function ofbeing able to transpose essential elements of meaning from one experienceto another. In this way, it involves the ability to discriminate both samenessand difference. For example, infants show a great sensitivity to temporalaspects of their environment and are able to translate these patterns fromthe visual to the auditory and vice versa. Infants appear to abstract catego-ries from their experience, which they then use toward making discrimina-tions in, and thereby making sense of, their environment. The ability tocategorize is present across multiple domains and includes specific attri-butes of stimuli such as orientation, hue, angle, and form (Quinn, 1994). Asinfants develop, they become able to attend to, and discriminate between, awider range of perceptual features (Cooper & Aslin, 1994) and becomedifferentially responsive to specific patternings, such as pitch contours (Fer-nald, 1993; Papousek, Bornstein, Nuzzo, Papousek, & Symmes, 1990).Much as the consistency of the maternal object may be crucial for theoptimal emotional development of the child, specific skills appear to beconstrained by the consistency and coherence of the infant’s environment.To use speech again as an example: in spite of the capacity of the younginfant to accomplish the tasks integral to the learning of speech, the relativeconsistencies of experiences with the linguistic environment itself providethe patterns, or “structural invariants” (Cooper & Aslin, 1994, p. 1676) thatenable the child to discriminate and respond to the relevant signals. Thistype of responsiveness to cues within self and other is an essential aspectof psychic growth (Smith, 1990).

Experiences of affective attunement, or resonance with a responsiveother, form the basis of amodal experiences, as the infant’s experience is


recast into some other form of expression (Stern, 1985). Rooted in this typeof interactive sensory activity are both rhythmicity and the capacity to play(Rayner, 1992). Infants are adept at amodal perception, translating informa-tion from one sensory modality into another while preserving the underly-ing form or pattern, a rudimentary form of symbolic manipulation. Many ofour experiences are specifically understood through our experience of theirpattern, or inherent order. Affect, for example, is experienced in terms ofboth amplification of experience (intensity) and hedonic tone (pleasure vs.unpleasure) (Tomkins, 1982). It is, inherently, a patterned phenomena interms of both our internal experience and our ability to perceive its traceson the visage of the other (Ekman, 1982). Affect has been proposed as“the supra-modal currency into which stimulation in any modality can betranslated” (Stern, 1985, p. 53).

Stern (1985) coins the term ‘vitality affects’ to refer to aspects of affectthat are not categorical, but rather are more dynamic and kinetic, and de-scribe the contour of the experience, such as ‘fleeting,’ ‘decrescendo,’ or‘explosive.’ However, in that way he would appear to sever an aspect ofaffect and to reify it, so that it becomes categorical rather than qualitative.His alternative term, ‘activation contour,’ may be less subject to misinter-pretation. The notion of activation contour is particularly useful in attemptsto understand auto-sensuous shapes. My sense is that these shapes becomea concrete representation of an activation contour, such as self-soothing.For example, Stern notes the propensity of humans to attend to stimuli ar-rayed in the general configuration of the human face and form. Optimally,this configuration becomes associated with the onset of soothing regulatoryfunctions. However, when they are not, they may provide an impetus forself-soothing in the face of anxiety-producing stimuli. The emotionally pres-ent mother, absent, may be invoked as a soothing presence derived fromself/other experience, whereas the emotionally absent mother, present, re-quires an alternative source of soothing.3 The child’s ability to manipulateflesh on flesh in rhythmic form becomes an opportunity for self-soothing injust this way.

The infant’s experience is more primary than that of the adult, not yettranslated into verbal categories that override and obscure the basic pat-ternings of experience as lived in the moment (Stern, 1985). The emergentorganization of the subjective world inheres in the idiosyncratic patterningsof experience, which are then projected onto the outer world. To the extentthat the child is engaged in responsive interactions with significant others,a shared system of meanings evolves. To the extent that the child is isolatedfrom the shared emergence of meaning, the patternings will be idiosyn-cratic. The creative act would seem to be born in the interstices betweenconsensual and idiosyncratic meanings.

248 CHARLES

Tustin (1991) describes autism as “a massive ‘not-knowing’ and ‘not-hearing’ provoked by traumatic awareness of body separateness” (p. 586)in the service of survival. The creative endeavour may become a containerfor this intolerable awareness of separateness, in the form of protectiveauto-generated shapes with their calming or soothing effects. Tustin (1991)describes these auto-sensuous shapes as “endogenous swirls of sensation[that] . . . distract attention from unbearable bodily separateness, and as-suage the terrors” (p. 588), but also become a form of prison, as entrenchedmodes of behaviour that cut the child off from other experiences. However,the creative act, when communicated in some form that can be receivedby an other, becomes a link to the other, and thereby to meaning—a con-sensual symbol.

SYMBOL FORMATION

Segal (1957) suggests that symbol formation is a function of self-soothing.We derive symbols as a means for dealing with anxieties associated withour object relations, primarily the fear of the bad object and the fear of theloss of the good object. As aspects of self are projected into and becomeidentified with the object or external world, the part that contains the inter-nal object becomes identified with and serves to represent the internal ob-ject. “These first projections and identifications are the beginning of theprocess of symbol formation” (Segal, p. 393). In the earliest stages of devel-opment, symbols are not experienced as symbol, but as object. Segal termsthese ‘symbolic equations,’ in that no distinction is made between the sym-bol and that which is symbolized; the two are one. “In the symbolic equa-tion, the symbol-substitute is felt to be the original object. The substitute’sown properties are not recognized or admitted. The symbolic equation isused to deny the absence of the ideal object, or to control a persecutingone” (p. 395).

With the establishment of the good object, the use of symbols changes.In particular, as empathy develops, there is the need to inhibit libidinal andaggressive aims. The symbol provides an important means for displacingaggression and lessening fears of loss (Segal, 1957). The internalization ofthe symbol becomes “a means of restoring, re-creating, recapturing andowning again the original object. But in keeping with the increased realitysense, they are now felt as created by the ego and therefore never com-pletely equated with the original object” (Segal, 1957, p. 394). The distinc-tion between symbol and object serves important developmental and inte-grative functions. Symbol formation becomes a means whereby we “can beconsciously aware and in control of symbolic expressions of the underlyingprimitive phantasies” (Segal, p. 396). This becomes the basis of self and


other communication: “Not all internal communication is verbal thinking,but all verbal thinking is an internal communication by means of sym-bols—words” (Segal, p. 396). To the extent that a symbol is distinguishedfrom the original object, it becomes a creation of the subject and maythereby be more freely utilized. Whereas consensual symbols become toolsfor reciprocal communication between self and other, idiosyncratic sym-bols may become tools for defensive exclusion of the other.

There is a privacy inherent in the formation of autistic shapes; the elabo-ration of a sense of continuity (meaning) in the presence of the other be-comes the reassurance that the self can be sustained in the presence of theother. Integral to the understanding of the roots of this experience is theawareness of the extent and nature of the fears at this level of experience,“such as the unconscious anxiety that aspects of oneself are so private andso central to an endangered sense of being alive that the very act of com-munication will endanger the integrity of the self” (Ogden, 1989, p. 15).From this perspective, the act of creation becomes the encoded tentativeinterpolation of the self toward the other in a fashion sufficiently crypticthat one might retreat, ostensibly unharmed, and yet containing enough ofthe essence of the self that one might, indeed, be ‘seen.’

FORM: AN ESSENTIAL ASPECT OF THE CREATIVE ACT

Form is defined variously in the Concise Oxford Dictionary (1995) as: “1a a shape; an arrangement of parts. b the outward aspect (esp. apart fromcolour) or shape of a body . . . 3 the mode in which a thing exists or mani-fests itself . . . 9 a set order . . . a formula . . . 16 arrangement and style inliterary or musical composition. 17 Philos. the essential nature of a speciesor thing.” In his psychoanalytic exposition of aesthetic form as an ‘organiz-ing unity,’ Rose (1980) suggests that “all other principles of aesthetic form,such as thematic variation, balance, development, and intensity, are subsid-iary to organic unity” (p. 4). From this frame, order and rhythmicity may beseen as essential facets of form. This definition affirms both the essential,universal quality of basic structure and the particular manifestations or deri-vations of that basic form.

Rose (1980) depicts the essential dialectic of the creative process as onebetween the ambiguity of primary process and the control of secondaryprocess, between physical events and semantic meaning, and between infi-nite variety and oneness. The creative endeavour becomes an attempt tocapture some facet of this variety in a manner that brings the onlookercloser toward the essential form that underlies it. In this way, the particularis seen as a manifestation of a greater whole. This view is consistent withthe Freudian view of overdetermination, in that essential aspects of experi-

250 CHARLES

ence will be represented in great multiplicity, making more likely theireventual recognition. We have many other examples of this type of phe-nomena, for example in the so-called ‘repetition compulsion,’ wherein thatwhich is not worked through becomes a dilemma with which we face our-selves in successive iterations, over and over again.

There are many rhythms to the human experience, some of which appearto be essential and universal. Notable among these are various forms ofsoothing, such as rocking or sucking. Individual variations may be recog-nizable variants on these universal themes, or may be so idiosyncratic asto be virtually unrecognizable without reference to the contexts in whichthey have arisen. As examples, we may think of headbanging, or the cuttingor burning that for some of our patients become forms of self-soothing.Rose (1980) notes that the ‘new physics’ asserts the importance of an under-standing of form over content in a universe that is not static but everchang-ing, wherein “the properties of material things are understandable only interms of their interaction with the rest of the world with which they arealways engaged” (p. 23). Rather than becoming overwhelmed by the multi-plicity inherent in this view, we may turn to the soothing certainty of form,within which adheres an unchanging essence in its myriad manifestations.It is rather like a dream, in which we may have a dazzling array of appar-ently diffuse elements all leading us back to some rather simple dilemmaneeding our attention.

For some individuals, it becomes imperative to create an elaborate dis-play of these essential dilemmas, to obscure the essential vulnerability un-derlying them. We can see, in many creative endeavours, a repetitive en-gagement with a troubling—or soothing—theme. These bodies of workbear the imprint of patterns being continually elaborated in repeated at-tempts at self-soothing, communication, and working through. For exam-ple, I work with one writer whose novels are highly diverse in their outermanifestations of time and place, and yet the interactions of the charactersmay be seen as an evolving interplay, over time, of the same configurationsthat troubled him in childhood and permeate his analytic material, as well.His troubled sleep and waking dreams provide continuing opportunities toenact, discharge, and play with the ongoing threats of abandonment andannihilation that enliven the landscapes of his productions, at one step re-moved from the infinitely more terrifying world of actual people.

Symbolic functions enable us to play with that which might be too terrify-ing if it were to be perceived as too real. The dialectic between physicalevents and semantic meaning gives art a plasticity that provokes growth(Rose, 1980), much as does paradox; it is in the nature of metaphor toexpand meaning and to heighten our appreciation of reality. The interplayof the familiar and unfamiliar promotes growth and enhances our ability to


perceive the underlying structure or meaning. Before content there is form;witness the child’s delight in the production of speech: “In the beginningbabbling is probably a direct expression of libidinal satisfaction withoutsymbolic referents” (Rose, p. 139). Rhythmicity contains the dialectic ofrecurrence and change. Growth is a function of change within the or-der—of surprise. Within the ongoing flow of sameness lies the soothingfunction, which enables us to tolerate the novel, to attend to it, and tomove toward it in attempts toward integration. Whether it is framed in termsof inside versus outside, self versus other, or conscious versus unconscious,this is the primary dialectic in which all growth occurs. The affirmation andelaboration of both sameness and difference are the essential roots of mean-ing (Matte-Blanco, 1975), establishing equivalencies in the refinding of theself in the other and thereby delimiting the bounds of reality (Freud, 1925).

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THINKING: MOVING TOWARD MEANING

Ogden (1989) has elaborated a position that he sees as developmentallyprior to Klein’s ‘paranoid-schizoid’ and ‘depressive’ positions. The ‘autistic-contiguous’ position has been depicted as the ‘sensory floor’ of experience(Grotstein, 1987), the ground upon which the experience of self becomeselaborated (Ogden, 1989). From this position comes the direct sensory ex-perience of basic forms or patterns that have fundamental ‘meanings’ (inthe loosest sense of the word) in terms of basic bodily states or stasis. Theparanoid-schizoid position brings an absorption into the greater dimension-ality of the experience, wherein the basic form or sensation becomes morerichly elaborated, yet remains essentially unlinked—fragmented. Accordingto Klein (1957/1975) and her followers, it is in the depressive position thatthe elaboration takes on the dimensionality of perspective—what we mostoften term ‘meaning,’ in the sense of ‘understanding’ or ‘knowing-about.’This sequence would seem to move from primary to secondary process,from what Matte-Blanco (1975, 1988) defined as the ‘symmetrical’ modeof being to the realm of disjunctions wherein elaborated meanings can beverbalized and exchanged.

In analytic work, we encounter many things that cannot be ‘thoughtabout,’ in spite of the need to understand them. Some experiences mayprecede conscious thought developmentally, whereas others may not con-form or cohere to our habits of thought, being inconsistent with our otherthinking or perhaps too large or small a thought to be grasped. Matte-Blanco (1975, 1988), for example, has suggested that our perspective se-verely constricts our ability to understand. He describes this in terms ofdimensionality, as we attempt to comprehend some matter that might beincomprehensible given our frame of reference, and yet eminently compre-

252 CHARLES

hensible given a wider frame. For example, no process can be understoodwithout the frame of time: omitting that dimension gives lie to the entireconcept, making it, literally, incomprehensible. This may be true of spaceas well; many of our concepts have little meaning isolated from the contextswithin which they occur. There would seem to be little about human intra-psychic or interpersonal functioning that is comprehensible without someunderstanding of context, hence, the requisite associations to dreams orother material in analysis. Without these, whatever meaning we might de-duce comes more from the context of our own thoughts than from those ofthe other to whom they more rightfully belong. For Matte-Blanco (1988),this is most notably the case for unconscious processes, which operate “ina space of a higher number of dimensions than that of our perceptions andconscious thinking” (p. 91).

Ogden’s (1989) ‘autistic-contiguous’ position would seem to roughly par-allel what Matte-Blanco (1975) has described as ‘symmetrical being.’ Thisdepiction of an existential experience of reality, unelaborated, would seemto approximate Winnicott’s (1971) notion of ‘being,’ Bion’s (1962) notionof ‘beta-elements’ or ‘undigested facts,’ and Lacan’s (1964/1978) notion ofthe register of the ‘real.’ These are all ways to talk about basic sense data,or ‘things in themselves’—what Mitrani (1995) has termed ‘unmentalizedexperiences.’ Matte-Blanco suggests that “the sensation is, in itself, a pri-mary experience, which is irreducible to description, though we constantlytry to describe it. The same is true of symmetrical being: . . . it does nothappen, but just is” (p. 101).

Bion (1963) has attempted to describe how these primary sensory experi-ences become transformed into verbal thought via relationships betweencontainer and contained, which depend first on transformation of raw ele-ments through mentation. For the infant, this occurs through the containingand metabolizing functions of the mother. The undigested, or beta, elementis seen as too concrete and too idiosyncratic to be useful in thinking proper;it must first be transformed into a more generalizable, more abstract ele-ment, which will be more tractable. The presence of patterning suggeststhat the original sensory data have already been elaborated into alpha ele-ments, which “comprise visual images, auditory patterns, olfactory pat-terns” (Bion, 1962, p. 26), whereby they may be utilized in dream, uncon-scious waking thinking, and memory. These elements are then broughttogether to form more complex thoughts. The reversal of this process is theunlinking of associations, which Bion (1962) described as the ‘beta-screen,’roughly corresponding to the position Tustin (1991) and others have de-scribed as ‘pathological autism,’ versus the more normative position de-scribed by Ogden (1989). Alpha function, or mentation, enables the indi-


vidual to utilize experience rather than being faced with the unsatisfactorychoice of either taking evasive measures or becoming overwhelmed.

In an attempt to make manifest the relationships between elements with-out obscuring them by content, Bion (1962) moves to a formalized, abstractsystem. The abstract and concrete form a complex interrelationship thatfacilitates the elaboration of meaning in their interplay as, alternately, con-tainer and contained. The concrete gives foundational meaning, whereasthe abstract gives meaning in a way that allows us to utilize that knowledge.The capacity to form abstractions enables the individual to move beyondthat which is literally ‘known’ in a derivative sense, to that which might be‘known,’ in the sense of understanding. For Bion (1962, 1963), the relation-ship between the elements is the crucial factor in understanding, whichhe terms the ‘selected fact’, and quotes at length from Poincare’s (1952)description of the process of mathematical formulation, by way of illustra-tion:

If a new result is to have any value, it must unite elements long since known, buttill then scattered and seemingly foreign to each other, and suddenly introduceorder where the appearance of disorder reigned. Then it enables us to see at aglance each of these elements in the place it occupies in the whole. Not only isthe new fact valuable on its own account, but it alone gives value to the old factsit unites. . . . The only facts worthy of our attention are those which introduceorder into this complexity and so make it accessible to us. (in Bion, 1962, p. 72)

The other side of this is the introduction of disorder, or complexity, intoorder, which also facilitates the creation of something new. This is the dia-lectic between the paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions, via whichreal learning can take place, creating the possibility of true comprehension,thereby facilitating further learning. For Bion (1962), the discovery of a se-lected fact is always idiosyncratic and affectively driven. He depicts thediscovery of coherence, or meaning, as a significant event that becomesknown through its undeniable impact on the perceiver. Meaning is funda-mentally a function of linking—whether of object to object, idea to idea,or self to other (Bion, 1962, 1963). Naming, in whatever form, provides anenduring link between patterned elements, prescribing the order of theirinterrelationships and thereby facilitating the ongoing task of integration.

Bion (1963), affirms the importance of fundamental affective knowingsthat help to organize and give meaning to our experiences. Freud (1915)struggled with these same issues as well, suggesting that sensory data mustbe linked to words via ‘traces’ in order to be susceptible to consciousthought. However, in many creative processes, the sensory data becomes

254 CHARLES

form, which is then translated into a medium other than words. Even whenthe medium is poetry, the transformation is such that the word is not uti-lized in the same manner as occurs during more traditional thinking andspeaking. In analysis, this process of transformation appears to occurthrough the type of amodal processing described by Stern (1985) and others(Edkins, 1997), by which containment enables meaning-making to occur.For example, Winnicott (1977) relates how a four year old patient, ‘thePiggle,’ told her mother that she didn’t need to know what was wrong inorder to communicate it to Winnicott, saying: “I don’t know, but I canalways tell him” (p. 163).

Bion (1965), too, affirms that transformations in analysis do not solelyoccur in verbal form; rather, he suggests that verbal knowing can interferewith the person’s ability to actually ‘be’ in a different place with them-selves. ‘Knowing about’ can become an autistic object, of sorts, a secondskin or empty shell that protects one from learning through experience andthereby from any real knowing or understanding. Bion (1963) describes apatient whose words did not conform to any coherent rules, and thereforefunctioned as sound rather than as speech. However, the pattern of soundhad meaning for the patient, which could be experienced by him througha form of projective identification in which the sound was expelled out intothe room; through this process, meaning was revealed in a way that couldthen be taken in by the patient.

As in the previous example, there are many primitive experiences thatare unconscious, not due to repression but by virtue of their structure,which cannot become conscious without being transformed in some fash-ion. Bion and Matte-Blanco use different language to refer to essentiallythe same process of moving from unconscious to conscious—from sensoryimpressions, through ordering, to meaning (knowing rather than knowingabout), which seems to be a function of making the unconscious con-scious—and being able to hold on to both. Bion (1965) refers to this pro-cess as a ‘transformation,’ whereas Matte-Blanco (1975) depicts it as a‘translating’ or ‘unfolding’ function. The unconscious can only be broughtinto consciousness by virtue of its elaboration in some spatiotemporal form.The act of creating forms within the lived moment—which represent, tosome extent, our experience of the lived moment, thereby containing someessential aspect of it—is one aspect of the transformative process. In thisway, we move the experience-as-lived into the spatiotemporal realmthrough the elaboration of its registration upon the senses.

In accord with Bion (1962, 1963), Matte-Blanco (1975) suggests that forthe unconscious to become conscious there must be a selection process;we can only know a few finite bits of the infinite at any one time. Wordsare the asymmetrical tools of the translating/unfolding function, moving


from infinite into finite, giving form and structure to that which must be re-presented in some fashion in order to be communicated. In this process,we inevitably lose something of the original experience, as it becomes con-tained/constrained, and yet, this is the inevitable process of making mean-ing in the asymmetrical world of verbal interchange. For Matte-Blanco, thehuman mind is in a chronic process of extracting form in the interplay ofunlike with like.

SYMBOLS AND CREATIVITY

Within the dialectic created by these basic processes of generalizationand discrimination comes the basis for symbol formation, a precondition ofboth creativity and understanding. Milner (1952/1987) suggests that thedrive toward making meaning wells from an “internal necessity for innerorganization, pattern, coherence, the basic need to discover identity in dif-ference without which experience becomes chaos” (p. 84). Chaos, to someextent, is a function of two-dimensional space, space that has not yet beenordered and, therefore, cannot be thought about. In primitive experiences,before the advent of spatial perspective, there is no possibility of identifica-tory process, only rote imitation with an associated emotional shallownessand lack of meaning. Meltzer (1975) notes that autistic patients, as they getbetter, describe their experience as one of chaos. Growth ensues throughthe ordering of that chaos into meaningful elements that may be furtherelaborated over time.

This ability to distinguish between elements is essential for the elabora-tion of symbols in formal, asymmetrical thinking. Anticipating Matte-Blanco(1975), Milner (1952/1987) suggests that finding new objects entails theability to discover the familiar in the unfamiliar, which requires “an abilityto tolerate a temporary loss of sense of self, a temporary giving up of thediscriminating ego which stands apart and tries to see things objectivelyand rationally and without emotional colouring” (p. 97). She likens thistemporary loss of self to the aesthetic moment, in which one loses one’sself in the process of becoming absorbed by the work of art. This is both apart of the creative act and a mode whereby it can be deeply appreciated.It is also an essential element of the analytic enterprise, in which we be-come ‘lost’ in the process and yet maintain an observing ego through whichto make sense of our experiences.

Milner (1957/1987) equates creativity with symbol formation, whether itis feeling or knowing that is symbolized. Although the sense of union,merger, or ‘oceanic feeling’ is often represented as a regressive return tothe womb or breast, Milner suggests that this immersion into primary unitymay also be a means for redifferentiation of self and other in novel fashion,

256 CHARLES

a necessary prerequisite for creative activity. This sense of union may repre-sent, not a yearning for dependent reliance on the other, but a very funda-mental return to the self as source. The “inherent rhythmic capacity of thepsycho-physical organism can become a source of order that is more stablethan reliance on an order imposed either from outside, or by the planningconscious mind” (Milner, p. 224). There may be a regressive feel to theseprimary rhythms, but that may be an artifact of dicta that proscribe andconstrain our experience through the imposition of social values.

The roots of creativity are derived in our early experiences of self andother, self within other, and other within self. Much as the earliest trans-formative experiences occur through the reverie of the mother, later cre-ative acts require the internal capacity for reverie, made possible by a set-ting in which we are freed, for some time, of the necessity for vigilance(Milner, 1957/1987). The mother’s reverie and attunement become proto-types for our own ability to be with our selves, and to let go of any rigiddistinctions between self and other. In those moments, settled within ourown rhythms, we are more free to respond to them as they strike us; per-haps it is in those odd moments of relatively unconstrained thinking thatinternal form can best become symbolized. That would certainly seem tobe the principle underlying many aspects of the analytic setting.

Milner’s (1956/1987) depictions of the creative process spring from adeep desire to understand both self and other. She describes art as a unionof feminine and masculine elements, the infinitely receptive aspect versusthat which actively constrains into known modes or patterns. She notes thatthis dialectic is similar to the process of analysis in which there is an inter-play between the receptive free associations and the constraints of theoreti-cal forms. Creativity requires the relatively free interplay of phantasy andthinking, symmetry and asymmetry, and unconscious and conscious pro-cesses. Most fundamentally, art is a personal process, derived from mo-ments of being.

A work of art, whatever its content, or subject, whether a recognizable scene orobject or abstract pattern, must be an externalization, through its shapes andlines and colours, of the unique psycho-physical rhythm of the person making it.Otherwise it will have no life in it whatever, for there is no other source for itslife. (Milner, 1957/1987, p. 230)

This is true of the medium as well; for Milner, the relationship betweenthe artist and her medium of expression is one of union, of knowing theother enough to both know it as other and to be totally present within it—acogent description of our task as analysts.


Milner (1957/1987) notes the importance in art of being able to createsymbols for the expression of the inner life. Speaking specifically of thevisual arts, she suggests that

since this inner life is the life of a body, with all its complexities of rhythms,tensions, releases, movement, balance, and taking up room in space, so surelythe essential thing about the symbols is that they should show in themselves,through their formal pattern, a similar theme of structural tensions and balancesand release, but transfigured into a timeless visual co-existence (p. 226).

Milner describes the primary function of art as the creation of new objects,rather than the restoration of lost ones; it is in the novel putting together ofunlike things in unlikely ways that we begin to see anew that which wehad come to not see by force of habit or prohibition (Charles, 1998, 2001).This is done by “unmasking old symbols and making new ones, thus inci-dentally making it possible for us to see that the old symbol was a symbol;whereas before we had thought the symbol was a ‘reality’ because we hadnothing to compare it with: in this sense . . . continually destroying ‘nature’and re-creating nature” (Milner, p. 229).

AUTO-SENSUOUS SHAPES AND THE ARTISTIC PROCESS

The artistic process is one whereby what Bollas (1987) has referred to asthe ‘unthought known’ can be formally represented and thereby known.What is fundamentally self becomes externalized, whereby it becomesmore than self and more than other, thereby potentially taking on someaspect of the universal, which gives art its more enduring appeal, and pro-vides the experienced sense of moving towards ‘truth’ or ‘O’ (Bion, 1965).Formalization implies creating a structure. The creative endeavour is mosteffective when it allows us to move between the levels of conscious andunconscious, in the forms of sensory experience, fragmentation, and mean-ing,4 without fear of becoming trapped in either, or, alternatively and per-haps most profound, when we can experience all three simultaneously.Although they are often discussed as discrete or dichotomous, and therebypathologized (especially at the more primitive levels), these three modes ofbeing also represent profound resources for creativity. It is no wonder thatpeople confuse creativity and madness; creativity takes us to the brink, andit can be a terrifying, yet awesome (awe-ful?) view.

As we approach the simultaneity of the three modes of being, we movecloser to the realm of metaphor. This term is derived from the Greek ‘totransfer,’ implying a transference of meaning from one thing to another.Figurative language involves the saying of one thing with the intention of

258 CHARLES

meaning another, to achieve a novel meaning, that may be either wider ormore precise than the original meaning. Arlow (1979) suggests that “meta-phor can be understood in a more general way as a fundamental aspect ofhow human thought integrates experience and organizes reality” (p. 368).The metaphoric relationship creates a distance between the reality referredto and the mode of expression, making it easier to think about each, aswell as about the relationship between the two. In this way, it introducesthe transitional space (Winnicott, 1953), and facilitates creativity, as in theability to ‘play’ with an idea (Winnicott, 1971).

When I first read Mitrani’s (1995) explication of autistic shapes, I thoughtof my own experiences with patterned forms or sensations that become theimpetus for the expression of complex and often relatively unconsciousaffects. For me, these forms become vehicles for the transmission of mean-ing in many ways. They become elaborated in black ink on white paper asrelatively simple, repetitive patterns, which accrue into complex represen-tations of sensations that had eluded verbal expression. In many ways, myhand comes to ‘know’ the subtleties of the endeavour in ways my con-scious mind cannot apprehend, as my hand learns to feel the nuances ofform that will give representation to distance, dimensionality, rhythm, andtexture. The drawing process itself takes the form of absorption into thepatterned detail, alternating with movements far enough away from the de-tail to be able to grasp the representation as a whole. It is in the interplayof detail and gestalt that form is represented as both underlying and over-arching structure and takes on a depth and multiplicity of meaning hithertounimagined.

My poems, as well, often begin with intense sensation that eludes repre-sentation in verbal expression, but rather ‘comes to me’ as a rush of pat-terned elements, much as depicted by Stern (1985) as affective contours—‘sensory melodies’—using words as the ‘structural invariants’. There is anassociative element that works at many levels simultaneously, joining im-age to image, sound to sound, meaning to meaning. As in my drawings,the depth and the multiplicity of meaning in the patternings of these ele-ments often eludes me until the sequence has run its course, and the wordsstare back at me from the printed page, awaiting elaboration or refinement.Once again, there is the interplay between the elements themselves, theirinterrelationships within the structure, and the larger structure as a whole,which becomes more than I could have imagined. In this way, the creativeact is born out of the basic patterns of meaning imprinted upon us by ourexperience, but not yet ‘known.’ Through the medium of choice, these pat-terns become elaborated into concrete symbols, which can then be manip-ulated by the conscious mind into patterns that make sense at that level, as


well. This is not so different from the processes at work in that other artcum science: psychoanalysis.

AUTO-SENSUOUS SHAPES AND THE PSYCHOANALYTIC PROCESS

Bianchedi (1991) suggests that “mental growth will consist in ‘makingthe unthought thinkable’” (p. 11). It entails a continuing process of makingmanifest that which has remained as background, eluding our attention andverbal (asymmetrical) understanding. The analytic process is furthered tothe extent that we can translate ostensibly meaningless interactions withpatients into patterned and meaningful material. To this end, containmentmay be a necessary prerequisite for rendering the unknown known (Mitrani,1995). Empathic attunement involves the “ability to be influenced by theform, sequence, and context and patterning” (Arlow, 1979, p. 373), and tobe stimulated by whatever message might be contained therein, even whenthe receiver is not consciously aware of the contents of the message itself.These unique configurations become purveyors of meaning beyond anyconscious awareness. Through the patternings of an individual’s displays,we may, over time, infer important themes that have shaped his or herexperiences and their products.

Psychic growth has been postulated as the ultimate aim of analysis: “theinterpretation should be such that the transition from knowing about realityto becoming real is furthered” (Bion, 1965, p. 153). This transition “is ofparticular concern to the analyst in his function of aiding maturation ofthe personalities of patients” (Bion, p. 158). However, in spite of our bestintentions, we often tend to avoid knowledge that seems too painful. Psy-chological phenomena, in particular, are easy to avoid, as they are notamenable to apprehension by the senses (Bion, 1965). This may precipitatea movement toward the concrete, often in the form of bodily discomfortsthat become the ostensible source of the pain—a focus on sensation ratherthan sentiment (McDougall, 1974). Bion notes our terror in the face of “theunknowable and hence of the unconscious in the sense of the undiscoveredor the unevolved” (p. 171), suggesting that our only hope for real transfor-mation lies in our ability to abstract from our experience, thereby avoidingthe obfuscating effects of the concrete and particular. However, “con-fronted with the unknown, ‘the void and formless infinite,’ the personalityof whatever age fills the void (saturates the element), provides a form(names and binds a constant conjunction) and gives boundaries to the infi-nite (number and position)” (Bion, p. 171). We are always caught betweenour desire to understand, and the tremendous difficulties we encounter in

260 CHARLES

our attempts to contemplate, in spite of our terror, the unknown (Charles,1999b, in press).

In our work, there is often a sensory experience of pattern, either affectiveor somatic, that becomes a cue or signal. We have caught some pattern ortheme in our unconscious register, which resonates in some familiar—orunfamiliar—manner, thereby inviting our attention. We tend to talk aboutthese resonances globally, as ‘tuning the unconscious’ to that of the other.This may be true, but overlooks important questions as to the nature of theinstrument being tuned or the medium of attunement. Rayner (1992) hasnoted that the analytic enterprise is built upon empathic attunement to pre-verbal events; it is through the emotional resonance, or matching, of thepatient’s rhythms or patterns that primary meanings become elucidated. Inmy experience, there are often swirls of sensation, much as described byTustin (1991), that have a familiar feel, suggesting an oblique pattern thatseems to carry thematic meaning in relation to the patient’s material. Alter-natively, the form may feel quite static, like the haunting, yet elusive, resid-ual sense of space in the wake of a particularly evocative dream. Oftenthese experiences are cross-modal in nature; the form, as experienced,bears no overt resemblance to that to which I am relating it, but carries thesame essential pattern. The pattern may bear the form of an affective con-tour or sensory melody, which carries its own meaning, if I can only bereceptive enough to discover it. It is very much like the use of symbols indreams, for example, in which we may know the identity of a person inspite of any ostensible dissimilarities. We often have the sense of verystrongly knowing the pattern without being able to give a name to it.

Attempts to articulate or communicate this function are elusive, very sim-ilar to the fate that has befallen projective identification. Our attempts tocommunicate often obscure the subtleties of the processes themselves.However, in the moment, we become aware of some presence that carriesmeaning. This may come in the form of an idea or sensation, or fragmentof dream or memory that ostensibly, on the surface, does not ‘fit.’ It is likea familiar shadow that haunts us by virtue of its elusive familiarity. We bothknow it and not know it simultaneously, as though registering the percep-tion in the wrong key. At these times, if I can catch the thought, or sensa-tion, or fragment, and attend to the form of it, to the underlying inchoate‘meaning’ of it, my thoughts often lead in a more fruitful direction than if Iwere to impose meaning by rational order. Perhaps these are the timeswhen the unconscious may become conscious; we enter into the profoundand uncanny twilit world of the preconscious, wherein there is greater ac-cessibility to nonverbal knowings. I would contend that one profound entryinto this world is through the vehicle of form, by which we can leap from


equivalence to equivalence through the shortcut path of what Freud (1915)calls ‘primary process’ and what Matte-Blanco (1975) refers to as ‘symme-trization.’ In these moments, when our capacity to make meaning at anunconscious level greatly exceeds our capacity to understand from a con-scious perspective, form may be the key.

For example, there are times of boredom or distress when I find myselfmaking patterned movements between forefinger and thumb. Often thesetake the form of circular, repetitive shapings. However, there are also mo-ments when I find myself detailing a more complex pattern, at times in theform of an elaboration of a letter of the alphabet. There is an order to theseshapings; in some ways it has the feel of a repetitive or compulsive act.However, as with any repetitive act, at some level there is meaning in thechoice of this act over some other, and I wonder about the choice of thisparticular movement, this particular pattern, at this particular time. At times,I notice my patient moving in reciprocal rhythms, and wonder whether myself-soothing has become their own. If so, does it further the process byenabling them to tolerate the awfulness or short-circuit it by immolatingtheir fear in some safe, but distant shroud? Alternatively, I also wonder howmy movements become informed by their own. This, too, would seem tobe part of the dance, as we communicate meanings through our bodies thatour conscious minds cannot yet comprehend.

The Oxford Concise Dictionary defines the artist’s medium as “the inter-vening substance through which impressions are conveyed to the senses.”From this framework, the analyst’s medium is her self, from basic sensoryexperience through the whole range of affective experiences and contours,through her history of dreaming and waking life, to the theories and otherabstractions that gird it, order it, and give it meaning. As I sat in sessionwith one patient in particular, a writer, for whom the interpersonal worldhas been very treacherous, I noticed her hands moving within one another.In the moment, I became aware of my own thumb and forefinger, movingin resonance to the rhythm of my patient’s hands. I could not tell whosemovements had preceded whose, but I did notice over the course of thesession that the reciprocal movements became slower as the work deep-ened.

Nina asked about my rug; had I reversed it? It could have been anotherrug she was thinking of, she said. I reminded her of a dream in which therug had become huge and was hanging on the wall. “I remember,” shesaid, her face softening like an Italian Madonna at my memory of her mem-ory. “It was black, and the same pattern was in the floor.” The effect hadbeen overwhelming to her, much as I become too large and treacherous asshe comes to rely on me. She began to talk more freely and then caught

262 CHARLES

herself; “I forgot to listen to myself,” she said. “It’s always hard to know ifone is safe,” I replied. “I just like to keep track,” she said. “But then, thatchanges the track,” I responded. “Yes,” she nodded, “It does.”

“I dread coming here,” she said, after a pause, “but then, there’s thepromise. I have been feeling better. At work, when I get anxious, I can calmmyself down. When it’s bad, I don’t try to do the numbers in my head, andI slow down and take deep breaths, and it’s OK.”

Nina told me about work; the people who had bothered her so intenselyare bothering her less. Her ‘nemesis’ was in the store one day, and it be-came apparent that the woman was not really actively evil, just miserable.An older couple came in, immersed in their own private bubble. They wererude and condescending and seemed to have no idea there were actualpeople there with whom they were interacting. My patient is tired of beingunreal to others; her mother lives in a fantasy in which Nina is just an‘extra,’ and yet her mother wants her always on stage to play against. Ninais like a prop, admonished to have no needs of her own. “Perhaps,” I said,“the attacks now are a lot like the food fights when you were a kid; yougot in the way of the food; it wasn’t necessarily directed at you. And yet,the attacks have always felt personal, as though they were about you. Butthen, in that moment at work, you saw the vulnerability behind the as-sault—that horrible woman trying in such pathetic ways to be part ofthings. I think that that couple must have felt very much like your parentsto you, using you as a prop, but dehumanizing you in the process. Allthese people, lost in their own fantasies, not really able to be present in themoment.” She was silent for a while. “I’m holding on to what you said,”she said, “so I can think about it.” “Perhaps it was too much” I wondered.“No,” she said, “I just want to be able to hold on to it.”

Nina told me of a horror story she had been reading; “it is about a psy-chologist who murders people and blames his patient. The patient is put todeath, but manages to not die, becoming the undead, and bringing othersback to life. It’s not the story I’m thinking of, it’s the scene, this cemetery,it is so vivid, and the characters keep chasing through it for one reason oranother. That author,” she said, smiling, after a pause; “he is so good, hehooks you in the first paragraph. It’s so vivid.” I wonder silently about howshe becomes responsible for my killing her, and how confusing it all be-comes to her, and how she keeps herself safe by staying outside.

At times, I can find her; I can move within her rhythms. As her wordscreate images, I can sense meaning and put it into words that interplay withher own. However, my overall experience of being with Nina, particularlyat the beginning of each hour, is rather chaotic. She comes in disjointed;she had either dreaded coming, or alternatively, had looked forward to thesession but became shaken by the harshness of the disjunction of anticipa-


tion meeting reality. It is like the story she described, in which there is asense of vitality that engages her, but along with it comes the chaos andthe terror. The process, here, too, is jumbled. As I write notes in retrospect,I create order from the seemingly disparate fragments, which weave to-gether into meaningful forms. In one particularly fragmented hour, occa-sioned by having spent the previous afternoon with her mother, Nina de-scribed her mother as a loosely running monologue, relatively imperviousto Nina’s interpolations. Nina is embarrassed by her mother’s vacuity andher symmetrizations of self and daughter—most notably her assumptionsthat Nina believes in the New Age phenomena to which her mother ad-heres. Nina recalls, as a child, trying hopelessly to follow her mother’sexplications of the latest rite or ritual that had caught the mother’s attention,always accompanied by her mother’s disdainful assumption that Ninawould inevitably fail to comprehend the meaning or value of this particularendeavour. In this way, her mother created of her a vacant audience, untilNina had little assurance of her own existence in any positive sense.

At times I find Nina’s associations difficult to follow. I have the sense thatshe both longs to be understood and is terrified of that very understanding,as though she might be annihilated by it. During the session I have beendescribing, there was one segment that I found particularly difficult to fol-low. I was uncertain as to whether there was some defect in my attentionor whether her thoughts were as fragmented as they seemed. The wordsseemed to have meaning on the face of them, but the face was only a tinyindication of the meaning, much like seeing a speck on the surface of darkwater and having the sense of a mammoth iceberg spreading its bulk justunderneath. I could recall that she had been talking about a space, whichwas a wound, terribly vulnerable and needing to be protected, and howshe would become aware of it in the company of others and feel veryvisible and at risk, and how her internal preoccupations would so huge thatshe found it difficult to attend to whatever was actually happening in theroom.

Nina then said that she often finds herself not really paying attention towhat people are saying, but rather finds herself running through her ownthoughts, reserving just enough to scan the external conversation. This wasa very vivid image for me, particularly striking in light of the symmetry withmy own experience of finding myself processing internally and letting herwords run by. I wondered silently whether this was a comment on herperception of having been left alone in the moment. When Nina said thatshe wonders if that is what makes it difficult for her to be around people, Iwondered silently what she was referring to—perhaps a justification for notwanting to be around people, or to the actual experience of finding it diffi-cult to actually be with or make contact with another person. She then said,

264 CHARLES

“I don’t know what I mean.” I said that I wondered if she said that whenshe was aware of a diversity of meanings and was feeling vulnerable andfearful, not knowing what meaning the other person might be making, andfearing she would be uncomfortable with their construal. She looked at mewith greater attention. “Yes,” she said. “But you must be aware of the differ-ent meanings.”

In that moment, I sensed Nina’s fear that I might be omniscient, whichseemed to be equated with seeing whatever meaning seemed most awfulat the moment. In this way, I seemed to become her father, defining her as‘bad’ for having her own needs or ideas in opposition to those of hermother. I said that I was at times aware of some diversity of meanings, butmight miss others. I didn’t want to destroy this mutual coming towardknowing by some belief in my knowing in the face of her not knowing. Istruggled to find words and to keep the point. I found it exceedingly diffi-cult, and had to begin speaking without knowing in order to be able toeven move toward knowing. All I had to go on, at the moment, was theform that the awareness had taken within my sensoria. There were nowords. Struggling toward words in that moment required a great deal offaith on my part, which was tenuous. Yet, I persisted, hoping that the wordsmight emerge as I groped toward them, holding the form that seemed tounderlie them in my mind. I began to speak from the form itself, tellingNina that when she had been describing that experience of having twotracks going on, an interior one based on her own preoccupations andanother one that was concerned with tracking the external rhetoric, andhad then said something about wondering if that was why she found itdifficult to be around people, I had not known exactly what she had meant.I had given her the two threads that had come to my mind, and yet theremight also be others. I said that it had appeared to me that she was strug-gling with that same diversity of meanings, which was what had elicitedmy comment. She seemed to ‘get it’—that we were both grappling withconceptions that are difficult to understand and make sense of, much lessto articulate, but that nevertheless seemed important enough to me to makethat attempt, in spite of the difficulty.

I said that it made sense that she would need to keep one track open inthat way, her childhood experience having been one of having her mother’sverbiage continually going on. Much of it must have been incomprehensi-ble to her as a child, and yet she had had to keep it organized in somefashion in order to protect herself. She had learned to attend to certain cuesthat necessitated certain actions on her part, without really attending to theongoing discourse in any integrative or meaningful fashion. I suggested thather early experience of living in a household in which her mother’s highlyidiosyncratic reality was the only important one had made it difficult for


Nina to maintain herself in the face of adversity toward her opinions. Withsome grounding from early childhood to support us, we can better toleratethose types of assaults to the self. However, for Nina, there had been insuffi-cient grounding assurance of the sturdiness of her self.

“What do I do with this?” Nina asked. “You’re not going to tell me,” sheanswered herself. “I don’t have the audacity to assume that I could know,”I replied. “You will do what you will do, and you will come back, andwe’ll see where you’ve gone, and we’ll try to understand. That’s all we cando. The more you can bring in your own metaphors and experiences andlet me inside of them as you have done today, the better I will be able tounderstand you from your own frame of reference, where I might actuallybe able to be helpful. But that is difficult, because it means getting past theline you were talking about, about needing to keep the interior safe.” Ninawas silent for a few minutes, then glanced toward the window from whichvantage point she could see the clock. I sensed that the time was oppressingher, and waited. She said that she had a lot to think about and left. Therewas a comfort in her leaving, which I took as an auspicious sign.

In this interaction, my sense was that both Nina and I were strugglingwith preconscious forms that were difficult to elaborate into words; thistransformation depended on faith in both self and other. The process ofbecoming attuned to one another seems to have provided the context inwhich this faith might flourish—in spite of her terror at being known. Oneof the forms we create between us is the space itself. We begin disjointed,fragmented, and then by the end of the hour, there is the palpable sense ofcircular form surrounding us, as though we had created, once more, awomb within which to sustain ourselves. For Nina, a gifted musician, thiscontainer seems to be patterned in the musical notes and scores withinwhich she soothes herself. Her idioms are not my own, and yet they seemto find corresponding metaphors within the sensations and images evokedwithin me during our times together.

Nina has lived her whole life in a world in which there was no respon-sive other to attend to her, without paying some terrible price. She hasbecome reclusive and patterns herself to the music she loves, the authorswho seem to really ‘see,’ or the cats who are reliably open and beyonddeceit. There is a whole world of beauty she treasures and tries to safeguardin the face of the horror that people have become for her. She comes in tosee me with huge trepidations, fearing imminent destruction as the pattern-ings of my universe threaten to overpower her attempts to attend to, andbegin to order, the rhythms of her own. Her rhythms of safety have becomesolitary ones by which she ensures that safety, but also entombs herself.Her intense vulnerability has been such that she remains ever vigilant forsigns that I, too, am one of the walking dead, silently eating her alive, or,

266 CHARLES

alternatively, that she might annihilate me through her terrible, devouringneed. And yet, she comes. “There’s the promise,” she says. There’s thehope of being held and not being dropped precipitously, I think. There’sthe unthought hope of coming to hold herself lovingly, without this terrorand awful isolation.

At times our work is like separating the layers of a palimpsest enough toreveal their multiplicity, each reflecting a different, yet convergent mean-ing. Like a fine gem, the whole is always more than the sum of the parts;the placement of the facets revealing the core in a new and unique way.For Nina, the core is unknowable, too fraught with terror to see directly,without feeling as though she would be annihilated by the sight. And so,we look indirectly, as we register our experiences of being with one an-other, and struggle to make meaning through our elaborations of those ex-periences. The analytic enterprise is often like a hall of mirrors in whichwe can never quite see directly that which we are attempting to observe.As we walk through these halls of mirrors, our sensory experience can be-come our greatest ally in recognizing and elaborating the essential rhythmsof self and other, thereby promoting the further conception and realizationof the self.

NOTES

1. I am grateful to Judith Mitrani, whose explication of autistic shapes provided the inspirationfor this paper.

2. I am using ‘mother’ in the generic sense of primary caretaker.3. I am grateful to James Grotstein for making this important distinction.4. These correspond roughly to the autistic-contiguous, paranoid-schizoid, and depressive

positions.

REFERENCES

Anzieu, D. (1979). The sound image of the self. Int. Rev. Psycho-Anal., 6, 23–36.Anzieu, D. (1984). Fonctions du Moi-Peau. L’Information Psychiatrique, 60, 869–

875.Anzieu, D. (1993). Autistic phenomena and the skin ego. Psychoanal. Inquiry, 13,

42–48.Arlow, J. A. (1979). Metaphor and the psychoanalytic situation. Psychoanal. Q., 48,

363–385.Bianchedi, E. T. de (1991). Psychic change: The ‘becoming’ of an inquiry. Int. J.

Psycho-Anal., 72, 4–15.Bick, E. (1968). The experience of the skin in early object relations. Int. J. Psycho-

Anal., 49, 484–486.Bion, W. R. (1962). Learning from experience. London: Heinemann.Bion, W. R. (1963). Elements of psycho-analysis. London: Heinemann.Bion, W. R. (1965). Transformations. London: Heinemann.


Bion, W. R. (1967). Second thoughts. Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson.Bollas, C. (1987). The shadow of the object: Psychoanalysis of the unthought

known. London: Free Association.Charles, M. (1998). On wondering: Creating openings into the analytic space. J. M.

Klein Obj. Rel., 16, 367–387.Charles, M. (1999a). Patterns: Unconscious shapings of self and experience. J. M.

Klein Obj. Rel., 17, 367–388.Charles, M. (1999b). The Piggle: Confrontations with non-existence in childhood.

Int. J. Psycho-Anal., 80, 783–795.Charles, M. (2001). The language of the body: Allusions to self-experience in wom-

en’s poetry. Psychoanal. Psychol. 18, 340–364.Charles, M. (in press). The outsider. Free Associations.Concise Oxford Dictionary, The (9th ed.). (1995). Oxford: Clarendon PressCooper, R. P., & Aslin, R. N. (1994). Developmental differences in infant attention

to the spectral properties of infant-directed speech. Child Dev., 65, 1663–1667.Edkins, W. L. (1997). Symmetry and perceptual and affective development: The

analytic object relation. J. M. Klein Obj. Rel., 15, 595–610.Eigen, M. (1998). The psychoanalytic mystic. Binghamton, NY: esf Publishers.Ekman, P. (1982). Emotion in the human face. Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press.Fairbairn, W. R. D. (1952). Psychoanalytic studies of the personality. London and

New York: Routledge.Fernald, A. (1993). Approval and disapproval: Infant responsiveness to vocal affect

in familiar and unfamiliar languages. Child Dev., 64, 657–674.Freud, S. (1900). The Interpretation of dreams. Standard Edition, Vol. 4, 5. London:

Hogarth Press, 1971.Freud, S. (1915). The unconscious. Standard Edition, Vol. 14, 159–215. London:

Hogarth Press, 1971.Freud, S. (1923). The ego and the id. Standard Edition, Vol. 19, 1–66. London:

Hogarth Press, 1971.Freud, S. (1925). Negation. Standard Edition, Vol. 19, 235–239. London: Hogarth

Press, 1971.Gaddini, R. (1987). Early care and the roots of internalization. Int. Rev. Psycho-

Anal., 14, 321–333.Gomberoff, M. J., Noemi, C. C., & De Gomberoff, L. P. (1990). The autistic object:

Its relationship with narcissism in the transference and countertransference ofneurotic and borderline patients. Int. J. Psycho-Anal., 71, 249–259.

Grotstein, J. S. (1980). A proposed revision of the psychoanalytic concept of primi-tive mental states: Part I. Introduction to a newer psychoanalytic metapsychology.Contemp. Psychoanal., 16, 479–546.

Grotstein, J. S. (1987). Schizophrenia as a disorder of self-regulation and interac-tional regulation. Presented at the Boyer House Foundation Conference: The Re-gressed Patient, San Francisco, March 21.

Guntrip, H. (1989). Schizoid phenomena, object relations and the self. Madison,CT: International Universities Press.

Innes-Smith, M. (1987). Pre-oedipal identification and the cathexis of autistic objectin the aetiology of adult psychopathology. Int. J. Psycho-Anal., 68, 405–413.

Isaacs, S. (1948). The nature and function of phantasy. Int. J. Psycho-Anal., 29,73–97.

268 CHARLES

Klein, M. (1975). Envy and gratitude. In Envy and gratitude and other works, 1946–1963 (pp. 176–234). New York: Delacorte. (Original work published 1957)

Klein, S. (1980). Autistic phenomena in neurotic patients. Int. J. Psycho-Anal., 61,395–401.

Krystal, H. (1988). Integration and self-healing: Affect, trauma, alexithymia. Hills-dale, NJ: Analytic Press.

Lacan, J. (1978). The four fundamental concepts of psycho-analysis. New York:W. W. Norton. (Original work published 1964)

Mancia, M. (1981). On the beginning of mental life in the foetus. Int. J. Psycho-Anal., 62, 351–357.

Matte-Blanco, I. (1975). The unconscious as infinite sets: An essay in bi-logic. Lon-don: Duckworth.

Matte-Blanco, I. (1988). Thinking, feeling, and being: Clinical Reflections on thefundamental antinomy of human beings and world. London and New York:Routledge.

McDougall, J. (1974). Countertransference and primitive communication. In Pleafor a Measure of Abnormality (pp. 247–298). New York: International Universi-ties Press.

Meltzer, D. (1975). Adhesive identification. Contemp. Psychoanal., 11, 289–310.Milner, M. (1987). The role of illusion in symbol formation. In The suppressed mad-

ness of sane men: Forty-four years of exploring psychoanalysis (pp. 83–113). Lon-don and New York: Tavistock. (Original work published 1952)

Milner, M. (1987). Psychoanalysis and art. In The suppressed madness of sane men:Forty-four years of exploring psychoanalysis (pp. 192–215). London and NewYork: Tavistock. (Original work published 1956)

Milner, M. (1987). The ordering of chaos. In The suppressed madness of sane men:Forty-four years of exploring psychoanalysis (pp. 216–233). London and NewYork: Tavistock. (Original work published 1957)

Milner, M. (1987). The suppressed madness of sane men: Forty-four years of explor-ing psychoanalysis. London and New York: Tavistock.

Mitrani, J. L. (1995). Toward an understanding of unmentalized experience. Psycho-anal. Q., 64, 68–112.

Ogden, T. S. (1989). The primitive edge of experience. Northvale, NJ: Jason Aron-son.

Papousek, M., Bornstein, M. H., Nuzzo, C., Papousek, H., & Symmes, D. (1990).Infant responses to prototypical melodic contours in parental speech. Infant Be-hav. & Dev., 13, 539–545.

Poincare, H. (1952). Science and method. New York: Dover Publications.Quinn, P. C. (1994). The categorization of above and below spatial relations by

young infants. Child Dev., 65, 58–69.Rayner, E. (1992). Matching, attunement and the psychoanalytic dialogue. Int. J.

Psycho-Anal., 73, 39–54.Rose, G. J. (1980). The power of form: A psychoanalytic approach to aesthetic form.

New York: International Universities Press.Schore, A. N. (1994). Affect regulation and the origin of the self: The neurobiology

of emotional development. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Segal, H. (1957). Notes on symbol formation. Int. J. Psycho-Anal., 38, 391–397.Smith, H. F. (1990). Cues: The perceptual edge of the transference. Int. J. Psycho-

Anal., 71, 219–228.


Stern, D. N. (1985). The interpersonal world of the infant: A view from psychoanaly-sis and developmental psychology. New York: Basic Books.

Symington, J. (1985). The survival function of primitive omnipotence. Int. J. Psycho-Anal., 66, 481–487.

Tomkins, S. S. (1982). Affect theory. In P. Ekman (Ed.), Emotion in the human face(pp. 353–395). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Tustin, F. (1969). Autistic processes. J. Child Psychother., 2(3), 23–39.Tustin, F. (1984). Autistic shapes. Int. Rev. Psycho-Anal., 11, 279–290.Tustin, F. (1986). Autistic barriers in neurotic patients. New Haven and London:

Yale University Press.Tustin, F. (1991). Revised understandings of psychogenic autism. Int. J. Psycho-

Anal., 72, 585–591.Winnicott, D. W. (1953). Transitional objects and transitional phenomena: A study

of the first not-me possession. Int. J. Psycho-Anal., 34, 89–97.Winnicott, D. W. (1971). Playing and reality. London and New York: Routledge.Winnicott, D. W. (1974). Fear of breakdown. Int. Rev. Psycho-Anal., 1, 103–107.Winnicott, D. W. (1977). The Piggle: An account of the psychoanalytic treatment

of a little girl. New York: International Universities Press.

Documents

Auto-Sensuous Shapes: Prototypes for Creative Forms