The non-verbal dimension in psychoanalysis: 'state' and its clinical vicissitudes

摘要

The author focuses on state, a particular and continuing dimension of non-verbal expression which, though generally seen, heard or felt, often remains implicit. Basic, primal, reflecting psyche and soma woven together, state lies in a direct link with our earliest beginnings. Conveying one's affect, the sense of one's body-of one's self-in relationship to oneself and to the outer world, it influences and is influenced by the presence of the other. Thus, a change in state may be an early cue of the experiential effect of a perception, reflecting the impact of another's felt participation-including that other's state-the place from which we may truly find ourselves a participant-observers.