Notes

Notes on a Session (2013/17, 16.5 mins)

with Therese Plaehn & Stephanie Roth Haberle

Adapted from "Creative Activity and the Search for the Self," in Chapter 4 of DW Winnicott's 1971 book Playing and Reality, this video documents a young woman in a session with her psychoanalyst, following her through different stages of congintion and emotion about the conditions of existence; the two connect through 19th Century poetry and creative play. The purpose of Winnicott's documentation of this session is a "plea to every therapist to allow for the patient's capacity to play... to be creative in the analytic work. The patient's creativity can be only too easily stolen by a therapist who knows too much." Roth-Haberle's therapist exercises a poised restraint while Phaehn's patient flails about, searching and, eventually, finding herself.

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