Self reflection: dreaming oneself to be otherwise
The emergence of Self is contingent upon an ongoing interaction with the care-giving environment. Under favorable conditions, this interaction gives shape to a developmental trajectory of increasing complexity with the experience of Self at its apex. Here the Self has a capacity for reflective awareness. Under less favorable developmental conditions or trauma, the Self is compromised and its capacity for reflective awareness may be impaired or focally lost. Reflective awareness lies at the center of what it means to be human, differentiating us from other creatures with ‘the mark of the possibility?.always to be other than we are.'(Heidegger). People come to psychotherapy to feel other than they feel, wanting to be free from the fated sense of their limited possibilities .It provides an opportunity for an ‘internal evolution’ (Hughlings Jackson) – where an expansion of reflective awareness can take place. Reflective awareness is a disarmingly simple term, but is farreaching in its ramifications. It includes: thoughts and feelings directed to one’s body and one’s feeling, towards oneself; a shift in the focus of this awareness to include the ‘other’ in all of their complexities; and the question of whom or what is doing the questioning. All these elements of reflective awareness are held in delicate dynamic balance. Its development is manifold, and marked by changes in self-states, relational configurations and features of language. This paper will examine reflective awareness from the perspective of its emergence in the therapeutic conversation, as proposed by the Conversational Model of Psychotherapy. To dream oneself to be otherwise occurs within a conversation
