History is not just fact and events. History is also a pain in the heart and we repeat history until we are able to make another’s pain in the heart our own. – Julius Lester
Lester’s insight reminds us that the history of one has to penetrate the life of another (intersubjectivity). History must not only be told; it has to be lived. “Repetition compulsion” (Freud) is that fundamental need to repeat difficult and distressing experiences of earlier life. This often comes in the form of dreams, transferences, projections, enactments, denials. It is not particularly helpful to label these therapeutic transactions as “pathologies” as labelling often distances us from our patients. Rather, these clinical events are more helpful if we understand them as “agents” at the disposal of the patient in “contacting” the authenticity of the clinician. A reaching out to the heart of another to be seen.
When repetition does not “hit” someone (absence in presence) repetition has to continue until it does. This is where acting out and impasses show up in our treatments. It is only when the repetition activates affective states in the other and the other “stays in the game” and works it through, that transformation can occur. “We repeat history until we are able to make another’s pain in the heart our own.” If one cannot reach the other any change will be only on the surface. When the heart of the other is reached…. it is then that we can then talk of transformation.