Precious little: Birth and death in the analytic process

What makes for the liveliness of a silence? How does liveliness prevail over destructivity in the unconscious encounter between two body-minds in the analytic process? What is being experienced unconsciously can go against the tendency to repeat, because the unconscious and conscious response of the analyst does not repeat the closing and/or the intrusiveness of the primary environment. The necessary receptivity required from the analyst and his/her unconscious capacity to accept an active passivation and a state of relative selflessness supposes that his/her narcissistic defences can be suspended to allow for working through rather than acting out. The unconsciousness of the analyst's mental life can be seen as a safeguard to the liveliness of the process. Just as his unconscious defences can sometimes hinder the ongoing development of the analytic process and elaboration. Interpretation only comes as an end result of a sustained contact and intercourse of the analyst's hopefully lively unconscious mental life and that of the analysand. Overcoming the risk that excitation prevails over tenderness is part and parcel of the constant unconscious working through of the analyst. The acting out works as a soul murder and tends to destroy the potential fecundity of the analytic encounter.