Table Of ContentGraceful. Poised. Accepting. Poetic. Generous. Open to life’s mysteries. These are thoughts that
circulated through my mind as I read Bruce Reis’ marvelous, monstrous, zombie-filled book. Here
is an author who can make the death drive seductive. Reis extends a heartfelt welcome to his
patients, to other psychoanalysts working in the field and to his readers. His review of the literature
is remarkable for its compassion and insight into the thoughts of others. His clinical vignettes
beautifully illuminate worlds of being together. For anyone who wants to grasp the vibrant realm
of intersubjective psychoanalysis this is a wonderful book.
—Jonathan Lear, The University of Chicago, USA
A sparkling and erudite journey through the intersubjective dimension of psychoanalytic work.
Reis weaves together the literature from two continents, from Freud to de M’Uzan, from Bion
to Ogden and Spezzano. As he does so, illustrating his ideas with artful clinical vignettes, he
develops a style and conceptual model that is very much his own, one in which the analyst’s
presence, openness and even psychic surrender to the patient’s communications create the
conditions for gradual change. A book well worth reading.
—Lucy LaFarge, Regional Editor for North America at the IJP; Clinical
Professor of Psychiatry, Weill Cornell Medical College, USA
Creative Repetition and Intersubjectivity is an exceptional book in which Bruce Reis succeeds in
freshly approaching the subtle paradox that lies at the core of the analytic process. That paradox
involves the tension between the effort on the part of the analyst to open himself or herself as fully
as possible in a free and undirected way to what is occurring in the session; and at the same time,
to bring to bear on those forms of experiencing a disciplined use of the mind with which to gauge
the manner and timing in which to make one’s presence felt. Reis’ clinical discussions crackle with
the immediacy, the intimacy, and the danger of true analytic engagement. I cannot recommend
this book more highly both to those new to analytic practice and those well-seasoned in that work.
—Thomas H. Ogden, M. D., Author, most recently, of Reclaiming Unlived Life:
Experiences in Psychoanalysis and Creative Readings:
Essays on Seminal Analytic Works
Dr. Bruce Reis’ book takes the reader on a fascinating journey through the unique territory that
is created by the engagement between analyst and analysand at deeply unconscious levels. It
is here in the depths of the mind that we become acquainted with the unexpected chimeras
and ‘monsters’ of our psyches, like the unexpected sea creatures living at deep ocean steam
vents. Dr. Reis is simply masterful in his ability to access and intricately weave together the
valuable c ontributions of both classical and contemporary psychoanalysts, including Freud,
Searles, Winnicott, de M’Uzan, Bion and many others. For those analysts interested in the
continued relevance of unconscious processes, Dr. Reis’ book is an invaluable companion that is
simultaneously an excellent read.
—Lawrence J. Brown, Author, Transformational Processes in Clinical
Psychoanalysis: Dreaming, Emotions and the Present Moment
‘Duende’ wrote John Berger, ‘is a quality, a resonance which makes a performance
unforgettable . . .’ Such is the quality of El Duende present in Bruce Reis’s unforgettable book.
Here Reis captures the complex, creative and unfolding process of the live analytic encounter.
In a movement toward the future of psychoanalysis, Reis takes the reader back in time to a
pre-enlightenment ethos in which receptivity to emergent experiences in the field of analysis
reveals the surfacing of dynamic unconsciousness in action. His book offers a unique and
beautifully written addition to cutting edge analytic theories about the non-conscious, non-verbal
dimension of our work and much more.
—Rachel Peltz, Faculty and Supervising Analyst, Psychoanalytic
Institute of Northern California, San Francisco, USA
Creative Repetition and
Intersubjectivity
Creative Repetition and Intersubjectivity looks at contemporary Freudian and
post-Freudian theory through an intersubjective lens. Bruce Reis offers views on
how psychoanalytic conceptions from the last century uniquely manifest in the
consulting rooms of this century – how analytic technique has radically evolved
through developing Freud’s original insights into dreaming and hallucinosis, and
how the presentation of today’s analysands calls for analyst’s use of themselves in
unprecedented new ways.
Taking up bedrock analytic concepts such as the death instinct, repetition,
trauma and the place of speech and of silence, Reis brings a diversely inspired,
twenty-first century analytic sensibility to his reworking of these concepts and
illustrates them clinically in a process-oriented approach. Here the unconscious
intersubjective relation takes on transformative power, resulting in the analyst’s
experience of hybridized chimerical monsters, creative seizures, reveries and
intuitions that inform clinical realities outside of verbal or conscious discourse –
where change occurs in analysis.
Drawing on an unusually broad selection of major international influences,
Creative Repetition and Intersubjectivity will be of great interest to psychoanalysts
and psychoanalytic psychotherapists across the schools of thought.
Bruce Reis, Ph.D., FIPA, is a Fellow and Faculty Member at the Institute for
Psychoanalytic Training and Research, New York, an Adjunct Clinical Assistant
Professor in the New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy
and Psychoanalysis and a member of the Boston Change Process Study Group.
He is North American book review editor for the International Journal of
Psychoanalysis and serves on the editorial boards of The Psychoanalytic Quarterly
and Psychoanalytic Dialogues. He is the co-editor (with Robert Grossmark) of
Heterosexual Masculinities (Routledge, 2009).
Creative Repetition and
Intersubjectivity
Contemporary Freudian
Explorations of Trauma, Memory,
and Clinical Process
Bruce Reis
First published 2020
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2020 Bruce Reis
The right of Bruce Reis to be identified as author of this work has
been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted
or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from
the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Reis, Bruce, 1960– author.
Title: Creative repetition and intersubjectivity : contemporary
Freudian explorations of trauma, memory, and clinical process /
Bruce Reis.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2020. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019017053 (print) | LCCN 2019019051
(ebook) | ISBN 9780429291555 (Master) | ISBN 9780367261184
(hardback : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780367261207 (pbk. : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Freud, Sigmund, 1856–1939. | Psychoanalysis. |
Intersubjectivity. | Psychic trauma. | Memory.
Classification: LCC BF173.F85 (ebook) | LCC BF173.F85 R438
2020 (print) | DDC 150.19/5—dc23
LC record available at HYPERLINK “https://protect-us.mimecast.
com/s/ux1WCDkY05i5ZZZEAF5_tIP?domain=lccn.loc.gov”
https://lccn.loc.gov/2019017053
ISBN: 978-0-367-26118-4 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-26120-7 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-29155-5 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Apex CoVantage LLC
Contents
ContentsContents
Preface x
CHRISTOPHER BOLLAS
Acknowledgements xii
Introduction 1
1 Monsters, dreams and madness: explorations in the
Freudian intersubjective 7
2 An introduction to dreaming 21
3 Zombie states: reconsidering the relationship between
life and death instincts 33
4 Symbiont life 47
5 Performative and enactive features of psychoanalytic
witnessing: the transference as the scene of address 57
6 Silence and quiet: a phenomenology of wordlessness 73
7 Form and content 79
8 Duende and the shape of things unknown 87
9 Creative repetition 101
Index 117
In the fairytales of musicians, you are led to it
By the usual talking dog, or sloe-eyed twins
Who ask your help to dig it from the dune
Or the leaf mould. Now – in a normal story –
A faint voice snivels if you let me out . . .
Then rehearses its extravagant parole;
But here a solid silence is observed,
And when you’ve carved the block from the wet sand
Or prised it from its fist of alder-roots
To work your knife below the lid, you find
Another box, then another, and another,
And in the last, a beautiful mute bird.
‘The Black Box’ – Don Paterson (2005)
