Public Anxieties and Projective Identification: Therapeutic Encounters Between Danish Clairvoyants and Their Clients.
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Public Anxieties and Projective Identification : Therapeutic Encounters Between Danish Clairvoyants and Their Clients. / Steffen, Vibeke.
I: Ethos (Malden), Bind 44, Nr. 4, 12.2016, s. 485-506.Publikation: Bidrag til tidsskrift › Tidsskriftartikel › Forskning › fagfællebedømt
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TY - JOUR
T1 - Public Anxieties and Projective Identification
T2 - Therapeutic Encounters Between Danish Clairvoyants and Their Clients.
AU - Steffen, Vibeke
PY - 2016/12
Y1 - 2016/12
N2 - The capacity to receive occult messages and look into the future is claimed by individuals in most societies and probably always has been. In Denmark, clairvoyance is a popular service offered at the alternative market for counseling and healing. During my fieldwork among Danish spiritualist mediums in 2007–08, I was often puzzled by the way in which clairvoyants and clients seemed to share the same kinds of problems. This observation steered my interests toward understanding how personal sensations and feelings are exchanged in therapeutic encounters and raised questions about who is doing what to whom. Drawing on Jung's concept of the wounded healer to highlight the clairvoyant's role as a channel for societal anxieties and Melanie Klein's concept of projective identification as a framework for understanding the defense mechanisms at stake in object relations, I argue that psychoanalysis may add an important critical dimension to the anthropology of therapeutic encounters.
AB - The capacity to receive occult messages and look into the future is claimed by individuals in most societies and probably always has been. In Denmark, clairvoyance is a popular service offered at the alternative market for counseling and healing. During my fieldwork among Danish spiritualist mediums in 2007–08, I was often puzzled by the way in which clairvoyants and clients seemed to share the same kinds of problems. This observation steered my interests toward understanding how personal sensations and feelings are exchanged in therapeutic encounters and raised questions about who is doing what to whom. Drawing on Jung's concept of the wounded healer to highlight the clairvoyant's role as a channel for societal anxieties and Melanie Klein's concept of projective identification as a framework for understanding the defense mechanisms at stake in object relations, I argue that psychoanalysis may add an important critical dimension to the anthropology of therapeutic encounters.
KW - Faculty of Social Sciences
KW - therapeutic encounters
KW - clairvoyance
KW - public anxieties
KW - projective identification
U2 - 10.1111/etho.12142
DO - 10.1111/etho.12142
M3 - Journal article
VL - 44
SP - 485
EP - 506
JO - Ethos
JF - Ethos
SN - 0091-2131
IS - 4
ER -
ID: 166872175