Presentness: an intersubjective dimension of the therapeutic act

In this article, the author discusses a mode of the therapist's presence as an important dimension within the intersubjective framework. She seeks to introduce the term presentness to denote dimensions of the therapist's explicit usage of her implicit knowledge and the role of her unformulated experiences within the therapeutic situation. The emphasis is on the power of these shared states of mutual reverie and moments of spontaneous responsiveness on the part of the therapist. The author wants to emphasize again that this term describes an important, though not exclusive, dimension of the therapeutic interaction. It does not replace such psychic functions as observation, distancing, empathy, or such modes of object-relating as transference, countertransference or projective identification. The term presentness illuminates the symmetrical dimension of the therapeutic interaction, and its contribution to the construction of "meaningfulness" for both patient and therapist.