In addition, a regressive shift from left brain rational to right brain intuitive cognition allows the clinician to perceptually receive what is outside conscious awareness, “beneath the words.” In this state of mind, the therapist listens with the right brain reverie and intuition directly to the patient’s right brain. This regression is familiar to clinicians, who access the state in order to generate clinical hunches and gists of the patient’s communications. Hammer (1990) described a therapeutic mutual regression:
My mental posture, like my physical posture, is not one of leaning forward to catch the clues, but of leaning back to let the mood, the atmosphere, come to me—to hear the meaning between the lines, to listen for the music behind the words. As one gives oneself to being carried along by the affective cadence of the patient’s session, one may sense its tone and subtleties. By being more open in this manner, to resonating to the patient, I find pictures forming in my creative zones; an image crystallizes, reflecting the patient’s experience. I have had the sense, at such times, that at the moments when I would pick up some image of the patient’s experience, he was particularly ripe for receiving my perceptions, just as I was for receiving his. An empathic channel appeared to be established which carried his state or emotion my way via a kind of affective “wireless.” This channel, in turn, carried my image back to him, as he stood open in a special kind of receptivity. (pp. 99–100, italics added)
Schore, Allan N.. Right Brain Psychotherapy (Norton Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology) (pp. 49-50). W. W. Norton & Company. 2019, Kindle edition.
Cf.
Hammer, E. (1990). Reaching the affect: Style in the psychodynamic therapies. Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson.
