Synchronicity Cambray

While it would be instructive to explore in detail the vicissitudes
of empathy along each of the pathways shown, my focus will
be restricted to a process starting with “emotional contagion.” The
unconscious, affectively resonant aspect of empathy would operate
along path “b” in figure 9 and can impact psyche and soma. Jung
refers to this variously as participation mystique as a general psychological
issue, and “psychic” or “unconscious infection” when an illness
is transferred from patient to analyst. The dyad is then said to be in a
state of “mutual unconsciousness,” through a mechanism analogous
to the Kleinian notion of projective identification. 56 To the open and
receptive, or “empty” mind, this can induce an activating resonance.
Turning to a clinical example: a man in his early thirties with
obsessional difficulties had been in treatment with me for about a
year when we had the following session. We met at the last hour of
a rather long day, not his usual time; I had accepted a request from
him to reschedule several weeks prior due to a time conflict. The session
turned out to be laborious for me. While I was familiar with the
constricted states that often accompanied his difficulties in expressing
himself, especially when feelings were involved, I felt unusually
trapped and exhausted as the hour wore on. In the closing minutes of
the session, the patient surprisingly produced a dream that contained
the image of figure in a closet. There was no time for associations
or exploration of the imagery. After he left, I felt so depleted that I
needed to lie down and rest before driving home. I felt on the verge
of the flu; however, curiously I felt fine the next day. The discrepancy
signaled that path “b” might be active.
Working through such dilemmas begins with an act of recognition;
the analyst’s consciously identifying the affect or somatic state
activated as associated with the ingested “projection”—opening the
mind. Next, cognitive empathy by the analyst for his/her own distressed
internal state employs reflective understanding of the history
and meaning of such activations within the analyst’s own psychology.
This initiates internal empathic repair of the ego-Self axis, path “c” in
figure 9.
Returning to the case, the following week we met at our usual daytime
hour. Not surprisingly, the overt affective aspect of the field was
Empathy and the Analytic Field ( 83 )