This is part of what makes the psychoanalytic conversation different from ordinary conversation. At times, the words of the therapist are meant to disrupt the normal flow of associations, inviting the patient to encounter a dimension beneath language. Not to frustrate, but to uncover. To touch what is usually papered over by the regulating function of everyday speech. Just as saliva increases the surface area of food to make it more available to enzymes, oracular speech increases the surface area of language, making it more available to the transformative power of unconscious association and reverie

Oftentimes, psychoanalytic psychotherapy takes on a quality of iridescence, as thought and meaning emerge over time and in the space between patient and therapist. When following the lead of free association (i.e., say everything that comes to mind), the words that surface might not make sense until taken in the context of all the other words, thoughts, feelings, and actions that surround them. In this way, words tend to iridesce, shifting in meaning as patient and therapist slowly walk around them throughout the session—and over the course of a treatment.

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”

Psychodynamic psychotherapy invites us to do just this – to slow down and look around, inquiring about the nature of the present moment and our place within it, even if whatever is arising (e.g., thoughts, feelings, images) seems insignificant. Elytis, again, lures us with the possibility that “you will come to learn a great deal if you study the insignificant in depth.”   

For every leaping towards light, there is an equal and opposite rooting into dark. This intricate imbrication of opposites embodies the polyrhythm of the plant’s resilience and growth. And without those moments of dryness, those moments of lack and wanting, the roots and, in turn, the plant itself may never develop towards their full capacity.