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Years ago in the analyst's life, a sudden, violent sound coming from the business a floor below his consulting room registers in his psyche-soma. In the minutes before his next patient arrives, Tillotson runs down to the business and stumbles onto the aftermath of a violent suicide by gunshot. Although shocked and disoriented, the analyst manages to shield his patient from seeing the horrific scene. Tillotson writes “Trauma and the Fate of the Angel” (unpublished), soon after this incident in an attempt to work through a shared traumatic experience with his patient and it’s perforating impact on his containing capacities. Employing the metaphor of an analytic angel, and Bion’s concept of container-contained, Tillotson employs conscious memories, dreams, and clinical vignettes to construct a portrait of the analyst's containing function, and its limits, when experiencing extraordinary duress. In this presentation, Tillotson looks back on this extraordinary event in an effort to find new meaning.
Using Laplanche’s spiral as a metaphor for après-coup, the analyst reflects on his former writing process, in an après-coup of après-coup. The audience is invited to join in the process of spiraling reflection by listening to the presentation as a dream, as described by Ferro in post-Bionian field theory. In this way, Tillotson seeks to demonstrate how après-coup is more than theoretical concept and can be accessed in the present moment group experience.
Learning Objectives
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Participants will acquire an understanding of Laplanche’s spiral as a metaphor for après-coup as it relates to the processing of traumatic experiences and the ongoingness of mourning.
- Participants will be introduced to Bion’s concept of container-contained to better understand what is meant by the author’s use of ruptures in the containment process.
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Participants will acquire an understanding of the concept of psyche-soma through Ogden’s exploration and clarification of Winnicott’s term.
About the Presenter
Drew Tillotson PsyD, FIPA, BCPsa is a board-certified psychoanalyst in private practice in San Francisco, California. He is a graduate, faculty member and Past President of the Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California (PINC), Past Vice-President of the North American Psychoanalytic Confederation (NAPsaC), and currently a board director for both the Confederation of Independent Psychoanalytic Societies (CIPS) and NAPsaC. He teaches widely in the Bay Area and maintains a full-time private practice in San Francisco. Recent publications include: co-editor and chapter author for Routledge’s “Body as Psychoanalytic Object: Clinical Applications from Winnicott to Bion and Beyond” (2021); chapter author for Routledge’s “Braving the Erotic Field in the Treatment of Adolescents and Children,”(2022) edited by Mary T. Brady, PhD. and contributions to Jonathan Slavin’s new book The Soft Power of Culture: Art, Transitional Space, Death and Play, Karnac Publishing, April 2024.
About the Moderator
Nancy C. Winters, MD, FIPA is a psychoanalyst in Portland, Oregon and a Training and Supervising analyst of the Oregon Psychoanalytic Institute and NPSI, and a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the Oregon Health and Science University. She serves on editorial boards of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis (IJP) and the Psychoanalytic Quarterly. Recent publications include co-editor and chapter author of the 2022 Gradiva award-winning Body as Psychoanalytic Object: Clinical Applications from Winnicott to Bion and Beyond (2021), “Autoimmunity and its Expression in the Analytic Situation: Contemporary Reflections on Our Inherent Self-Destructiveness” (IJP, 2022), and “‘A Home to the Lie’: The Contemporary (Per)version of Truth” (American Journal of Psychoanalysis, 2023).
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