Containing
Containing in psychology describes a process in which psychotherapists initially record the projections of patients without acting on their own emotions that are triggered by these projections - i.e. doing them reactively. In a second step the psychotherapist transforms what has been absorbed, which is unbearable for the patient, into something bearable and in a third step gives it back to him. The term was coined by the British psychoanalyst Wilfred Bion in 1962.
The Containing is the ability to Rêverie allows (Bion) on the part of the psychotherapist, something to develop as a "dreamy divination". This is an event similar to the state of mind of a mother who tries to alleviate her child's fears by absorbing them, modifying them internally and then reflecting them back in a structured manner. With the Rêverie, the therapist or mother take on active “digestive work”, so to speak, of unbearable feelings, instead of just serving as a projection surface.
This type of support can have an ego- strengthening function that counteracts the weakness of the ego , for the psychotherapist's patient as well as for the mother's child. If so, it happens because the fears or other intolerable feelings are transformed by the psychotherapist or the mother into something that is bearable. In the best-case scenario, these modified feelings, which no longer exceed the patient's or child's tolerance threshold, are resumed by a process called introjection .
At the same time, the patient or child can perceive their counterpart as a person who manages to cope with the fear or other seemingly unbearable feelings. This paves the way to identify with the other person. As a result of this process of identification , the ability to transform unbearable feelings into something bearable and to endure them gradually develops. Such a process is meant by the term strengthening of the ego , among other inner-soul processes, some of which run very differently .
Containing is therefore particularly indicated or necessary in all those therapies that are about deeper, more comprehensive development of the personality and not just about releasing stresses to be dealt with in a focused manner or delimited topics. However, there can also be space in the latter, for example when projections are noticeable. The appearance of projections or - as one of their special cases - projective identification could then be an indication that the reason for seeking psychotherapy may not only have to do with a narrowable topic, but also go deeper into the personality. In particular, however, in the case of psychotherapy due to trauma , which has encountered an otherwise stable personality structure as an extraordinary burden, projections can also be possible. In this case, however, they are usually an expression of the destabilization in the context of the trauma and not an expression of an inherently unstable personality structure. Containing can also be used here to support the patient .
See also
literature
- Wilfred Bion : Learning through experience . Frankfurt / M .: Suhrkamp 1997.
- Gianluca Crepaldi : Containing . Psychosozial Verlag: Gießen 2018, ISBN 978-3-8379-2788-7
- Jacques Lacan : The mirror stage as the builder of the ego functions. [1949]. In: Lacan: Schriften Vol. 1. Ed. By Haas N. Olten W. 1966. pp. 61-70.
- Gerhard Stumm , Alfred Pritz (Ed.) Dictionary of Psychotherapy . Vienna: Springer 2000.
- Donald Winnicott : The mirror function of mother and family in child development . In: Winnicott DW, From Play to Creativity. Stuttgart, Klett-Cotta 1979. pp. 128-135