Madness and Otherness: Moments of Possibility
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West Midlands Institute of Psychotherapy
Description
The paper explores analytic work with psychotic states through the problem of “otherness”: how a patient cannot bear the therapist as a separate person, and how communication then shifts into enactment, intrusion, eroticisation, and attacks on the analytic gap. It also highlights the therapist’s struggle to maintain frame, think under pressure, and use reverie/countertransference after sessions when thinking feels impossible in the room.
For delegates in private practice, the paper’s value lies in boundary management, sustaining analytic stance, and recognising psychotic modes of relating in clinical work.
For psychoanalytic trainees, it models the clinical use of countertransference, embodied subjectivity, and case-writing as part of analytic thinking.
Shalini Masih is a Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist who also writes. Masih has a Masters in Psychoanalytic Studies from Tavistock and Portman, London and a PhD in Psychology from the University of Delhi, India. She is being mentored by psychoanalyst and author, Michael Eigen and Bion field theorist, Giuseppe Civitarese. Her publications have garnered international recognition. The APA (American Psychological Association) has honoured her with the Scholar Award for her clinical and research work. One of her papers was also nominated for the prestigious Gradiva Awards in 2020.
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