May 2023: "Foreign Bodies: From Interpretation to Translation" presented by Jon Sletvold, PsyD and Doris Brothers, PhD

Sletvold and Brothers will outline ideas from their new book, "A New Vision of Psychoanalytic Theory, Practice and Supervision: TALKING BODIES". They present the flow of I-you-we-world, how it is disrupted by trauma, and what is communicated in the “silence between the words.” They present an idea that is central to their approach, namely that psychoanalytic encounters take place between “foreign bodies.” Contending that interactions between foreign bodies require translation, they suggest replacing the traditional translational mode of interpretation with the forms of translation suggested by contemporary translation theorists, drawing on the work of Bresnahan on recent developments in the field of translation theory. Bresnahan notes that “to read for translation is to search for the interplay between the familiar and the unfamiliar, the way in which similarity and difference bleed together.” Since the interplay between the familiar and the unfamiliar, similarity and difference organizes every embodied analytic encounter, Sletvold and Brothers suggest that we are always engaged in “reading for translation”, and that we read not only words but our own and our patient’s bodily communications. They endorse Pedwell’s understanding of affective translation as a form of empathy. For Sletvold and Brothers, translation is a relational mode that allows for the emergence of new modes of embodied connectedness that underlie mutual healing. Two clinical illustrations are presented, one involving a woman patient who, at first, seemed very similar to Doris, and one involving a woman patient who, at first, seemed very different from Jon. Learning Objectives 1. Participants will be able to explain how the attentional flow of I-you-we-world is disrupted by trauma. 2. Participants will be able to discuss the relevance of the concept of “foreign bodies” for therapeutic encounters. 3. Participants will be able to explain how translation may replace interpretation in understanding therapeutic change.