Imagination, Creativity and Spirituality in Psychotherapy: Welcome to Wonderland

by Leanne Domash

Overview

The aim of this book is to awaken creative desire and expand the imagination of the psychotherapist and, in turn, her patient. Each chapter is meant to surprise the reader and help him see the world in a new way. Many varieties of imagination are explored — the spiritual, the relational, the dreamworld, the aesthetic and the adaptive. The author offers space to reflect, to daydream, to remember; space to pursue goals, to make new connections; space to take risks and space to be wrong. The psychotherapist is encouraged to find her own voice, be poetic, dare to create, converse with other disciplines and, most especially, enter the world of dreams. This is all passed onto the patient as the dyad enters the intersubjective field.

Both scholarly and practical, this volume elegantly and persuasively synthesizes for the first time research in many fields, including spirituality and Kabbalah, neuroscience, the arts, biology and artificial intelligence, to give an in depth and original understanding of the current pressing problems in the rapidly changing field of psychotherapy: how do we work with unconscious processes and early memories to help our patients become more imaginative, creative, hopeful and resilient, and in so doing, heal. The relationship between the body and creative imagination is fully explored as well as the disruptive effect of trauma on the imagination and how to address this.

The emphasis on surprise, uncanny communication, interdisciplinary inquiry, use of dreamwork and the imagination of the body — how it spontaneously meets new challenges— all stimulate the creativity of the reader. Through numerous case studies, the author illustrates the practical implications of how this exploration allows for deeper understanding and more effective treatment. With the innovative synthesis and specific techniques the author provides, the clinician has tools to carry on the work of moving the field of psychotherapy forward as well as work ever more effectively with patients.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780367280031
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	09/29/2020
Series:	Psyche and Soul
Pages:	204
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.19(h) x (d)

About the Author

Dr. Leanne Domash has had a life-long interest in the creative process and the intersection of imagination, spirituality and psychotherapy. She is a psychologist/psychoanalyst, writer and playwright and Certified Embodied Imagination Practitioner. Dr. Domash has written and spoken widely about the creative process, the uses of imagination, the healing power of art, the value of dreamwork and the implicit spirituality embedded in the psychotherapy process. Dr. Domash is Clinical Consultant in the New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis; Voluntary Psychologist, Mt. Sinai Beth Israel Medical Center, New York, NY; Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai, New York, NY. She maintains a private practice in New York.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments xiv

1 Arrival in Wonderland 1

The anxiety of creation 2

Hopes and goals 4

2 Spirituality and the imagination 13

The Kabbalah and psychotherapy 16

The Kabbalist myth of creation 18

Free will and the void 18

Bion and Kabbalah 20

Flow 21

Struggling with faith 23

How to enter transitional space with patients 26

Potential physical space 29

Therapeutic use of hallucinogenics to achieve a mystical state 29

End thoughts 30

3 Unconscious communication and the uncanny 35

Fear of psi 38

"Psi shock" in therapy 39

Even Freud dabbled in the occult 40

Ferenczi, the "thought reader" 42

Fast forward to current thinking 43

Is projective identification a form of telepathy? 46

Brief history of the concept 48

The science of unconscious communication and the uncanny 49

Are psi phenomena scientific? 53

Can we think extraordinarily? 54

4 The neuropsychology of "aha" moments 64

Facilitating unconscious freedom and the "aha" moment 66

Clinical empathy and sensitivity 67

Anxiety and dysregulation 68

Allowing unformulated thoughts to surface 70

The importance of reverie 71

Separateness and emotional insight 74

Neural correlates of the "aha" 76

Enhancing our capability for unconscious freedom 77

5 The biology of imagination 85

Biological building blocks of the imagination: the microworld of the neuron 86

Moving to the big picture: evolution 94

What's psychotherapy got to do with it? 98

To conclude 102

6 Transformative dreamwork: Embodied Imagination 108

Expanding the imagination of the patient 111

Transformation and the alchemical therapist 112

Technique of Embodied Imagination, or "knowing" by imagination 114

Embodied Imagination resolves creative insecurities 115

Clinical use of Embodied Imagination 117

Clinical examples 118

Personal experience with Embodied Imagination 120

Dreaming and creativity 122

7 Trauma: imagination interrupted 127

Embodied Imagination and trauma 127

The companionable analyst 130

Metaphor and imagination 132

The infinite 45 minutes: Freud and Margarethe 133

Loss of the empathic other 135

The neuropsychology of trauma 136

The art of survival 137

Personal example 138

Trauma and the struggle to create 139

8 How art heals 144

Language and poetic psychoanalysis 145

Therapeutic value of poetry 146

The importance of surprise and strangeness 148

The book as psychotherapist! the book as supervisor 149

"Psychoanalytic" live theater 151

The psychoanalytic relationship of Samuel Beckett and Wilfred Bion 152

Visual art and a new way of seeing 154

Architecture and the creation of "therapeutic space" 156

Thoughts for psychotherapy 157

Our visit comes to an end 159

9 Desire's arousal 166

Surprise 166

Containment 166

Finding one's voice 167

Inspiration 168

The lack that sparks desire 168

The potter and his clay 169

The hum in the ear 169

The spiritual imagination 170

The relational! resonant imagination 171

Dreamwork 172

Forgetting and remembering 174

The adaptive imagination 175

Endings 177

Index 181

Editorial Reviews

"As the relationship between our body and creative imagination moves increasingly to center stage in the research of our human condition – in studies of trauma, creativity, psychotherapy, placebo, biology, artificial intelligence and the arts – along comes a book that pulls it all together. With scholarly accuracy and solid research into a wide variety of fields that underlie theory formation in the study of psychotherapy as a creative art, Dr Leanne Domash has written a book I had been waiting for. While eminently practical and full of case examples, it shows scientific undercurrents in the rapidly changing science of psychotherapy and creativity. Their foundations in neuroscience, biology and chaos theory are explained in an elegant and fully embodied style we can all understand." Robert Bosnak, PsyA, Jungian psychoanalyst, originator of the Embodied Imagination method; Teaching Instructor at SUNY Upstate Medical University, Department of Psychiatry.

"If I had chosen another life path as a religious leader, I would bless this book for tackling the role of uncertainty and faith within psychotherapy. And there is so much more to be had. Author Leanne Domash covers many thorny topics at the heart of healing—the role of desire, inspiration, surprise, strangeness, intuition, and wonder. This is a Wonderland of a book, a dream space, an alchemical kettle for simmering creativity and imagination. By revealing her own doubts and vulnerabilities along the way, Domash walks her talk while providing a unique and persuasive synthesis of research that points towards an inherently creative universe, right down to the cellular level. This is a must read for all therapists wishing to enhance their creative faculties." Terry Marks-Tarlow, PhD, clinical psychologist, Santa Monica, CA; author of Psyche’s Veil, Clinical Intuition in Psychotherapy and A Fractal Epistemology for a Scientific Psychology.

"Drawing upon thousands of years of insights into the vast potential of human imagination from the Kabbalists and Maimonides to current psychoanalytic theory and neuropsychology, Leanne Domash offers us not simply a book to read but a space in which to explore and expand our notions of psychotherapeutic healing, the use of dreams, the vast potential locked in the therapeutic relationship and the emergence of the therapist’s own unique voice. This profoundly rich book compellingly opens up a unique perspective on the many ways that imagination and creativity are at the core of psychotherapeutic healing and authentic living itself." Robert Grossmark, PhD, ABPP, NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy; author of The Unobtrusive Relational Analyst: Explorations in Psychoanalytic Companioning.

From the Publisher