The familiar and the strange: the dynamics of change

This article relates to curative factors in the therapeutic process, or, to be more precise, to the various modes of the therapist's presence as presumed factors of change. It points to factors of change that have been discussed at length in the various streams of the analytical literature, which emphasized passive attention, absorption, processing and interpretation on the analyst's part, in an atmosphere of restraint and understanding (factors such as "free floating attention," "empathy," etc.). It stresses the importance of another psychic function different in nature--"defamiliarization"--as a condition that facilitates and accompanies processes of understanding and changes in perspective in relation to a reality aesthetically mediated by every human work of art, in general, and in relation to the personal-inner reality as it is expressed in the therapeutic work of art, in particular. This term sheds light on an active, mobile, breaking away--distancing--and rebinding aspect in the psychic functioning of the therapist (and in parallel of the patient), which allows them to "see the new" in a (supposedly) very familiar emotional given. In my view, this term joins others such as "act of freedom" and "constructive listening" in deepening our understanding of the therapeutic factor. There is reference to the term "defamiliarization," or "making strange," in its natural context--its birthplace--in literary criticism, and in a different historical context--in two key articles of the thirties that related to the causes of change in therapy in a very different way.