Meeting Borderland Patients in their Inner Void
Book ticketsOrganised by:
Society of Analytical Psychology
Description
A unique online conference across two days
Meeting Borderland Patients in their Inner Void
Re-constellating a Primary Attachment in an Unconscious Space
Presenters: Dr Malcolm Rushton & Professor Roderick Main
Convenor and Chair: Jay Barlow
Malcolm writes:
The idea of this conference is the result of many realisations over recent years. One that goes back much further is my disappointment with my own analysis. It helped me in many ways but NOT in enabling me to overcome a sense that I had, from very early on in life, that I had never managed to attach to my mother and hence never fully attached to myself. Though I functioned well in life, there was always a feeling that I wasn’t quite connected to the ‘other’.
I became aware that this experience, to a smaller or greater degree, was the experience of everyone that came to see me. This, after all the more superficial issues had been dealt with, began to surface. Then a whole series of unsolicited events happened which began to address this in a series of patients, who might be described as “borderland”, and I found that I was implicated, caught up with them in strange happenings which has led, to both them and me, feeling that a reboot has gone on, and the elusive attachment has happened.
I would like to tell this story and bring some order to the often chaotic unconscious journey and its implications for how my notion of analysis has changed.
Malcom Rushton, January 2024
‘A void in my chest was beginning to fill with anger.
Quiet, defeated anger that guaranteed me the right to my hurt, that believed no one could possibly understand that hurt.’
Rachel Sontag, ‘House Rules’
