Presentness: An intersubjective dimension of the therapeutic act

In this article, the author discusses a mode of the therapist's presence as an important dimension within the intersubjective framework. She seeks to introduce the term presentness to denote dimensions of the therapist's expl icit usage of her implicit knowledge and the role of her unformulated exper iences within the therapeutic situation. The emphasis is on the power of th ese shared states of mutual reverie and moments of spontaneous responsivene ss on the part of the therapist. The author wants to emphasize again that t his term describes an important, though not exclusive, dimension of the the rapeutic interaction. It does not replace such psychic functions as observa tion, distancing, empathy, or such modes of object-relating as transference , countertransference or projective identification. The term presentness il luminates the symmetrical dimension of the therapeutic interaction, and its contribution to the construction of "meaningfulness" for both patient and therapist.