The Memory of the Playspace

"Whoever remains unmoved, whoever cannot contemplate, or know the deep shudder of the soul in enchantment, might just as well be dead, for he has already closed his eyes on life."
(Albert Einstein)

Introduction

The purpose of this study is to call attention to a powerful, and somewhat mystifying experience that I call ‘enchantment’. I will define, and explore the qualities of this experience, and will attempt to present the developmental process that is likely to be in the background of this emotional construct. I will argue that the enchantment-experience is connected to the ‘playspace’ (Conversational Model) and it is functionally important in affect regulation as it plays a self-soothing and vitalising role. Via reviewing a number of relevant analytical concepts and providing clinical examples, I aim to integrate the experience of enchantment into the body of psychotherapies and into the mind-frame of psychotherapists.

The Language of Science

The experience of Enchantment, like many other deeply subjective phenomena, is challenging to describe in a scientific discourse. No matter how enchanted I become, how intense and true my own experience feels, I become frustrated and powerless when I try to intelligibly translate that which is deeply personal into words. It is particularly so, when I am attempting to uncover and understand the substance that makes up my experience.

As Daniel Stern writes: “sensual intensity is lost with the advent of language” . As the experiences and thoughts go on “in the half shadows” (Hobson 85) , descriptive language is not readily available. This difficulty is probably central and informative, as it relates to the very core of the experience, one that does not link easily to the linear communicative language, the language of science.

The importance of language that connects to the secondary process (Freud) is often discussed in contemporary psychoanalytic thought. The “reanimation of psychic life through the excavation and revitalization of words in their original dense sensory context in the early years of the patient's life”, by Steven Mitchell , is considered one of the main purposes of psychotherapy. In the Conversational Model (Russell Meares) of psychotherapy, the non-linear language as the marker of psychic life, the ‘stream of consciousness’, earns focal place in the therapeutic process. The metaphoric language is considered a vanguard of the sphere of privacy, and the language of intimacy.

For Loewald, when “language usage becomes too detached from primary process, life becomes affectively dead and empty” . ‘Languaging’ enchantment, requires poetry, art, and the aesthetic dimension. As Peter Lomas writes:

It is a bleak day in February. I sit looking out at the wind-swept trees, and I try to think about language. I have a sense of unease and emptiness. Then my glance falls upon a cyclamen plant on the window-sill. I cannot describe it. A poet would make a better job of this than I. But I am suddenly aware of the barrenness and poverty of words.(Lomas 1981)

In spite of our difficulties in science, enchantment-experiences cannot be evaded. We know they exist, and we love them. We long to have them and marvel at children for whom enchantment is a way of life.

Our culture creates illusions of enchantment in theatre, in lush operatic productions, movies and forms of art and entertainment. We only have to think of the enormous success of Cirque du Soleil with its enchanted images and ambiance to know that there is a hunger in our culture to experience life in a more enchanted way.

I am only happy to follow Einstein’s tradition and marvel over the mystical, the moving, even though this study would certainly not be accepted, if submitted, by certain Academic Psychology Faculties around the country. In this study I will affirm that good science is understood through marvel, and that only then does it become real value. Let us therefore, in spite of some difficulty, look at ways we can define this wondrous experience that I will call ‘enchantment’.

Grasping the Concept of Enchantment

Let me introduce a limited selection of definitions for enchantment The Dictionary definition of enchantment is “delight; charm or put under a spell”. The word originates from the French enchanter , and from the Latin cantare . The dictionary also lists the following synonyms: “power or quality of attracting: allure, allurement, appeal, attraction, attractiveness, call, charisma, charm, draw, enticement, fascination, glamour, lure, magnetism, witchery.” (In Roget's II. 95) In Wikipedia, enchantment is defined as “a magical spell, a charm or bewitchment, in traditional fairy tales or fantasy”.

Clearly, these definitions precise enough, do not take me any closer to the phenomena I am examining.

Milton Erickson who was famous for his appreciation of the use of enchantment in the therapeutic process, was considered the source of that enchantment by his students. The Lanktons (trainers of the Ericksonian technique) define enchantment in their training the following way:

Enchant is to influence by or as if by charms and incitation; to thrill or enrapture; to allure; to delight; to fascinate or to bewitch. To fascinate is to cast a spell over; to transfix and hold spellbound by or as if by an irresistible power; to command attention or interest by artful, subtle, challenging strange or piquant. Piquant means arousing pleasant mental excitement, engaging, provocative or agreeable challenging. (Stephen R Lankton, Carol H Lankton 1986)

Another really beautiful description that has some elements of my own idea of the experience of enchantment:

The world still holds an ancient enchantment. It hints of journeys into unseen and unmapped domains. There was a time when the distances between our world and those we consider "imaginary" were no further than a bend in the road. Each cavern and hollow tree was doorway to another world. Humans recognised life in all things. The streams sang and the winds whispered ancient words into the ears of whoever would listen. Every blade of grass and flower had a tale to tell. In the blink of an eye one could explore worlds and seek out knowledge that enlightened life. Shadows were not just shadows and woods were not just trees and clouds were not just pretty. There was life and purpose in all things and there was loving interaction between the worlds.
(Ted Andrews, 1993)

This enchanted world, this experience is above all alive. Bennett strikes a more integrated chord in me when she talks about the active facilitation of qualities of enchantment in life:

Enchantment is something that we encounter, that hits us, but it is also a comportment that can be fostered through deliberate strategies. One of those strategies might be to give greater expression to the sense of play, another, to hone sensory receptivity to the marvellous specificity of things. Yet another way to enhance the enchantment effect is to resist the story of the disenchantment of modernity. (Bennett 2001)

Indeed, this resistance motivates my study and my work.

I will use the term, ‘enchanted space’ to describe a complex, special experience, the expression of the innermost private, a wonderment filled joyous place. It is characterised by an unusual sensory intensity of colours, sharpened senses, intense positive emotions, warmth, intimacy and perhaps at times, it is topped with a touch of childlike feelings of magic. As P. Fisher describes it, it is a "moment of pure presence" (in J. Bennett 2001). The perception of the outside world fills with positive affect, accompanied with a sense of cosiness, safety and the ‘all is well’ feeling. It is akin to a sensation of fullness, and a feeling of liveliness, as if “one's nerves or circulation or concentration powers are tuned up or recharged.” (in J.Bennett 2001)

Sometimes it is indeed characterised by a changed sensation of time and space, just like in hypnosis. One of the most profound aspects of the enchanted space, in my opinion, is that we suddenly “recognise life in all things” (Andrews 93) . As Hobson notes when he writes about those special states of “self-forgetfulness”, “we seem to see into the life of things”. Seeing into things really opens up the meaning of those things far beyond the ordinary level of feeling laden images. We are now in the enchanted space. While the subjects of our perception are often the ordinary, the quality of the experience is not. Ordinary things are being seen in a very “personal way”, and in that space there is no fear and limitation. It is important to note here that while peak-experiences can be experiences of enchantment I do not limit my examination to those extraordinary experiences that the mystics talk about. I consider the enchanted space to be an expansive experience, contrary, to some views that connect it to a regressive process. “In a Universe of infinite energies and life forms, anything that expends our awareness and brings joy to our life can only be a benefit.”(Andrews 1993)12

Let me now start my journey into the mystery of enchantment by recounting some of my encounters with this experience.

The White of Christmas
My Own Experiences of Enchantment

As my section of the sand-tray was getting populated more and more with beautiful magical creatures and started looking like an enchanted forest, I became increasingly absorbed in this ‘otherworld’ and forgot about the ‘real one’ out there. In the real one my colleagues were waiting for me to finish, so that our short demonstration of the sand-play technique could continue.

I became utterly absorbed by this wondrous world that I had created in the sand from the moment I touched the sand with my palms. As soon as I started, I was transported back to my childhood, to age 4. I was building the most beautiful castle with an elaborate water system running through it. There were ponds and creeks, underground secret tunnels, and stunning bridges with spiral staircases leading up and down to the hundreds of beautiful rooms and passages. My castle was the most enchanting building in the world. I saw it in colour, it came alive and I lived in it, as I wandered through the hidden courtyards and ballrooms, which I still see in my dreams today.

The excitement that I experienced as a young child building my castle, and now as an adult, creating my ‘world’ in the sand as a part of our clinical peer group, filled me with joy, aliveness and something beyond that: with a sense of enchantment, wonderment.

The figures and objects that we were supposed to use to furnish our part of the tray were filled with life, and they were much more than symbolic objects. They were injected with emotion, beauty, mystery, colour and soul. They encapsulated the rich and magical substance of events that rushed back to me from my childhood. Back then everything carried shine, colour and contrast, and all things were incredibly rich with life.

I was driven to pack my part of the sand-tray with everything I could put my hands on. They were mythical characters of cherubs, sorcerers and angels, beautiful lush plants, and flowers. There was a Buddha, and a Faun, a large mushroom that could talk and even a ladybird playing with a butterfly. My world had a baobab tree and a garden pagoda amongst the flowers, a treasure chest holding lots of secrets, an exotic monkey and an elephant for the fun of it.

In the midst of my play I suddenly became aware of my colleagues patiently waiting for me to finish and of the time restraint we had for this exercise. It felt I had to return from a faraway world that was so so beautiful and rich that nobody in his or her right mind would ever want to leave. I certainly did not. I wanted to live in that world forever and I recognised how much I craved access to it in my daily life. In my childhood, this was my natural domain and I had no idea that others would not necessarily see the world my way.

I remembered the firewall at the end of my childhood street, which was nothing more then an ugly grey concrete wall. For me, however, it was the most mysterious, and imposing piece of architecture, that both scared and fascinated me in the same time. It needed to be approached with due respect, slowly and carefully, because it grew as I got closer and overpowered me by its size.

In fact all the places of my childhood have held the same magical quality that made them engaging and ever so fascinating to interact with. I recalled hundreds of scenes from my childhood which all had this overwhelming intensity and aliveness about them. Most of all, a particular Christmas night and the breath taking beauty of the spinning kaleidoscope.

It was a cold winter night. I was five years old, and gazing out of the window at home. The Christmas tree in my room had only a couple of candles still burning in the dark. It was nice and cosy inside; I was in my pyjamas, still excited from the beauty of my brand new kaleidoscope and the warmth of the family gathering earlier in the evening. The wonderful smell of the dinner still lingered from the kitchen, and a peaceful quiet atmosphere descended on the world. This corresponded with perfect peace within me. More than that. As I was gazing out to the snow-covered streets, I became aware of the contrast of the warmth inside and the crispy cold on the outside. Everything in me and around me felt beautiful, magical and was injected with a warmth of safety and a sense of the wondrous. In this world, only good things happened to everyone, and this world was a stunning place to be. Beauty had an intensity that made adults cry and children smile.

This snapshot encapsulates the sense of enchantment present in so many of the experiences that were part of my otherwise very ordinary childhood.

Objectively, the street where I lived was anything but poetic: it was an extremely busy road with trams, buses, cars and many trucks. There was a truck terminal at the corner and an ugly grey apartment building across from mine for a view. My own apartment was on the third floor of a representative building of ‘Socialist Modernism’ with large bullet holes in it, left by the invading Russian tanks of 1956. No romanticism whatsoever.

Still, wherever I was, whatever surrounded me, the sense of wonder was always present. It was internal, resistant to everything that was ugly, ordinary, or mundane. In fact, nothing was ordinary, because most of the time I lived in an enchanted world. This world contained very real events and people, but they all held a touch more colour, intensity and marvel to me. There were no miracles in my world such as in fairytales: birds did not talk and Santa did not take children to the North Pole. Even so, things and events were not just what they were, everything was imbued with an ‘enchanted substance’ so they looked and felt like some of the pictures in my fairytale books. I still love those pictures.

The “Pleasure-place”
“As if she never had seen the sky so blue,
The earth so green, the trees so freshly leafed:
For here, guarded by the high cliffs
That encircle this pleasure-place,
Autumn still spites the northern wind
And figs still ripen and oranges still bloom.”

(I. C. M. Wieland: Oberon VIII, 12)

It is clear that the space of enchantment has an intense positive affect.
It is about coherence, a sense of wellness and value that is assigned to the world, to the self. It is a core-experience within the self and it lights up the innerness as it filters through all the senses.

It is a transitional space where the real and the memory of a past-real (that has become inner), co-creates a special tone of the present. It is a ‘no-desire’ state; similar to the Winnicotian infant’s world who knows no desire because he has all, and is all. Still, it is not an Oceanic feeling how it is described in the transpersonal school of thought, because there is ordinariness about the subject of the experience.

The enchantment space is of the “intimate space” (Meares) , with permeability with the playspace (Meares) , which adds a kind of playful affect to it. The enchanted space has all the qualities of a healthy developed self, and some of the qualities of the playspace, the seed of self. There is an intimate quality of relatedness hovering over the enchanted space. The non-linear –“ fantasy thinking” that “goes on in the half shadows, or perhaps beyond awareness” (Hobson) , characterises the experience.
G was a client of mine who developed an overcomplient personality structure due to some developmental trauma. She was anxious and often dissatisfied with her life circumstances. She has eloquently described her experience of enchantment the following way:
It feels as if I had a small, but ever-full container of magic powder tucked away in my brain somewhere and it gets activated by something… anything… I don’t know, and then gets released onto the world. From that minute everything gets covered by this magic powder, as if a fairy had touched them with a magic wand… And everything changes into marvel, suddenly it all feels different. Nothing is really different, just nicer, everything seems nicer.
Although she treasured her capacity to enjoy this space, she was not able to access it when she was anxious or depressed.

Development of the Enchanted Space

I argue, that the enchanted space develops when the magical quality of the playspace can transfer into the mature intimate space, so the original animistic magical quality becomes integrated into the affect-landscape of the mature self. That affect tone will colour the intimate space and at times can be triggered at full intensity by the pattern recognition of metaphoric organisation in the memory (episodic, perceptual representational, or procedural by Tulving 72) . This mechanism is in the core of the enlivening function, the experience of enchantment fulfils in affect regulation.

To position the enchanted space with it’s ‘magical’ affect in the context of the self in the Conversational Model, and in Selfpsychology, we need to understand the playspace and it’s significance in self-development. We need to understand also some of those important psychological concepts that help us to grasp this complex experience. I will now attempt to summarize the developmental theory underpinning my explanation for the enchanted space, relying mainly on the integrative approach of Russell Meares.

In a healthy developmental line the self develops in a relational matrix, in the context of connectedness. The characteristics of that self are the capacity for self-reflection, the sense of value that colours the self (positive emotional tone), the feeling of continuity in time and coherence within self-states with an overtone of meaning contributed to events and life. To maintain that healthy construct, we need to be able to regulate affect, we need to have our selfobject needs met by exercising our agency. We also need self-expressive abilities via language, cognitive powers, and preferably creative capacity.

The link between our inner world and the external reality, especially the Other is an intimate space. Our inner world has to interact with the external domain in order to develop capacity for intimate engagement.

The sense of a private life is connected to affect. Affect links the floating and ever changing associative chain of thoughts, visions, sensations, and memories into a whole, that we interpret as our private selves. Meares, drawing on the work of Piaget, Vigotsky, James, Hobson, Baldwin and others, emphasised the developmentally essential playspace as the seed of the self, and used the metaphor of play in his integrative theory. When the actual playspace becomes virtual, through the process of symbolic play, and the actual object play becomes the ‘stream of consciousness’, our innerness is formed, the self is present.

The emotional construct of the playspace with its “warmth and intimacy” (James 1890 II. P.650) is then carried in the implicit or explicit memory systems (Tulving 1972, 1983) and gets called up by appropriate conditions, similar to the original situational conditions.

In the actual playspace the child is alone, but “the presence of the other permeates the whole scene”. (Meares, R. and Anderson, J 1993). The concept of the spielraum (playspace) is a curious mixture of the developing inner and the not yet differentiated outer, that serves as a projective field with real toys and things for the inner to be acted out. It is also spoken out with the egocentric language (Piaget) of non-linear chatter, which is the perfect metaphor for the associative language of the Jamesian stream of consciousness .

It is a meeting place, not unlike the concept of the Transitional Space that starts earlier in the developmental transition, in which, a “moment of illusion”, a moment of “psychological overlap” (Winnicot 71) can occur between mother and infant. In this space the mother is able to be there for the infant in a way that the infant can stay with the fantasy of the mother being his own creation.

The “Transitional Object” , which represents the presence of the valued other, is neither controlled by fantasy, nor by reality. ”The infant can employ a transitional object when the internal object is alive and real and good enough”. This is the space when we “come alive as creators or interpreters of our own experience” (Winnicotian Transitional Phenomena) . This phenomenon enables the child to develop creativity, an inner fantasy life, which is not intruded upon by reality too much, but is, at the same time, balanced out by reality.

In the Self-Psychology approach, the Self can only go through healthy development if the mother can fulfill a selfobject role for the infant, in other words, can be used as the extension of the child without intrusion of her own Self (Kohut). This is what Winnicot calls “adequate handling” and connects it to the presence of aliveness in the child. “Perception renders fantasy relatively safe; fantasy renders perception relatively meaningful. A sense of personal vitality is generated when each prevents the other from becoming too powerful.” 21

We can speculate about the space of enchantment as a special construct of complex emotions first developing in the playspace, where “reality mingles with magic” (Mares) . The child in the process of play freely creates anything he wants. With imagination, he creates stories and things, and he is absorbed in the play. He is the creator of his world, free from limitations of the outer (in health). The ambiance of positive affect accompanies this process, as the world becomes his.

Harvey writes: One wiccan told me that the ‘Otherworld’ has a strong relation to a playworld, not of theatre play, but of games and joking relationships, and that it is often fuelled by fantasy. Fantasy re-enchants the world for many people, ‘allowing them to talk of elves, goblins, dragons, talking-trees and magic’. It also ‘encourages contemplation of different ways of relating to the world’ and counters the ‘rationality of modernity which denigrates the wisdoms of the body and subjectivity’.

By 18 months, once the mother is recognized as an ‘Object’, we enter the realm of the social, the realm of the other-then-me. The following few years we visit both domains and the enchanted space can be transported from one to the other with ease. That is the time of the internalization of the playspace. The animistic thinking of the child creates a natural background for the magical to flow into the adaptive language, and thinking. During a 4-7 year period with increasing social interest, participation and “exchange” (Meares 93) the Intimate Space develops and the ‘Inner’ becomes silent, but can be brought into a conversation.

Here, “the focus is upon people rather than those things which have been invested with personal feeling and imagining. Under normal circumstances, the orientation towards the outer world does not obliterate that which is embryonically inner. Rather, attention is turned from it.” (Meares)25 The language development and the appearance of privacy mark this new developmental level. This is the time when Self fully develops, signalled by “the coins of intimacy”, and “the currency of its transactions, are secrets” (Pierre Janet, in Meares, 1976).

The mature self then will contain the experience of enchantment as a partial memory of the playspace, and as an active, ever-present potential to reactivate the integrated form of the original experience.

Developmental Conditions

What do we need in order to develop this experience and then maintain it as a part of the narrative of the self?

Naturally, all the conditions that underpin healthy self-development are also necessary for enchantment to be experienced.

Here, I want to pinpoint the most potent requirement: uninterrupted, reliably safe and continuous flow of positive affect that supports the symbolic play. Underpinning that, is the resonating Other, whose presence enables the affects and accompanying imaginations of free play. As the emotional complex of the symbolic play radiates into the world; from the inner into the inner-outer, and back, it forms a ‘capsule’, that contains the seed of enchantment.

If the enchanted experience becomes a dominant feeling in the playspace, if it is recurrent enough, then the content of the capsule, the enchanted tone, becomes a part of inner life, part of the stream of consciousness. Later, by the organising principle of the ‘moving metaphor’, whenever the conditions are right (freedom, safety, intimacy, warmth, playspace), the capsule can be activated.

The most basic sensations of beauty, joy, warmth, safety, the reliability and freedom of uninterrupted flow, and absorption mingle in this capsule. The enchantment experience then can flow into the intimate space and mix with reality. It can stay there as a potential for an imaginative, creative engagement, and also as an often dormant affect state, that can be activated. Optimal conditions for this activation process are: safety, freedom from the pressure of time, responsibility, a sense of relaxation, absence of anxiety, physical wellbeing, in general, space for innerness.

As we discussed before, the enchanted quality that is an integral part of the playspace can transfer into the intimate space, and at times floods our present perceptions when the right conditions are given. But how does this actually happen?

Emde’s (1983) “Affective Core” as the basis for the continuity of the self, informs our assertion of the developmental transition from the magical tone of the playspace to the enchantment experiences of the developed self.

The Activation of the Enchanted Space

The activation of the enchantment experience is likely to happen via metaphoric similarities (Modell 2004) and according to requirements of self-regulation. “Metaphor functions as a pattern detector” (Modell 2004) so that the sensory material, affect, imagery (affect and visual together), preverbal affect (vitality affects), bodily sensations, meaning, ambience of the old situation/relationship, are unconsciously being transported into the here and now. In James words:

Of our own past states of mind we take cognizance in a peculiar way. They are 'objects of memory,' and appear to us endowed with a sort of warmth and intimacy that makes the perception of them seem more like a process of sensation than like a thought.(James 50)

Specific affects and non-specific, amodal ‘vitality affects’ (D. Stern 85) are both “experienced as dynamic shifts or patterned changes within ourselves.” The same neuronal firing pattern, ‘activation contour’ could then belong to any sensory modality: visual, kinaesthetic or auditory. The system of vitality affects can be the carrier of preverbal memories, and can trigger even pre-representational memories by connecting vitality affects of current and old experiences.

Tulving and Schachter’s concept of ‘Priming’ (1990) also serves as an explanatory principle. It involves an emotional, sensory or behavioural response in the here and now, to an unconsciously recalled signal. That signal in our interpretation could be a memory of the enchanted space.

Enchantment and the Unconscious

''One does not have to be a mystic to remain open to the mysteries of human life and human individuality'' (Loewald, 1978, cited in Mitchell, 2000, p. 53) .

As the previously suggested developmental process is part of an unconscious organizing system, it is important to integrate it into modern, relational notions of the Unconscious (Grotstein 2000, Loewald 77, Eigen 98, Mitchelle 2000, Donnel Stern 97 ). The common motive in these preferred theories is the view that the unconscious is a storehouse of creative, enlivening and somewhat mystical forces. These forces are seen to enrich the functioning of the self and considered to be beneficial for direction and guidance.

Some of the authors (like Grotstein 2000, Bion 1965 , Eigen 98 and others) argue that there is a primary ‘already there experience’ in consciousness, a kind of ultimate reality that needs to be preprocessed via the unconscious in order to be made available for self-reflection. The Other (mother or therapist) is viewed as the necessary channel through which the ‘raw material’ that is otherwise unmanageable, can be transformed into manageable forms.

Lowevald talks about the “original density” of experience, referring to a kind of unity of experience where inner and outer, real and fantasy, past and present are undifferentiated. This ‘primal unity’ that characterizes the earliest form of experience, persists throughout life in a hidden form. It binds various segments that appear disconnected together. He writes about the mature organization of our technologically adapted existence where “inside and outside become separate, impermeable domains; self and other are experienced in isolation from each other; actuality is disconnected from fantasy; and the past has become remote from a shallow, passionless present.”

Daniel Stern, when talking about the limitations of linear language, writes:

Language, then, causes a split in the experience of the self. It also moves relatedness onto the impersonal abstract level intrinsic to language, and away from the personal immediate level, intrinsic to the other domains of relatedness.

By “other” he means " the richest forms of experience that emerge in the preverbal realm, with its densely sensual, cross-modal textures”. This is exactly like the experience of enchantment. The ‘unformulated experience’ is there before language, and words are often inadequate to define the right fit, the right meaning. In Donnel Stern’s system the unconscious is a generative and creative force, and accessing it, creates vitality and meaning.

For Steven Mitchell the unconscious is a psychic organization that involves an extremely important part of reality, not captured by rationality. Thus, it becomes a source of revitalization, meaning and of enchantment.
In all these views the emphasis is on the enriching, vitalizing flow that needs to be directed to consciousness. This takes us to the significance of the experience of enchantment in the system of affect regulation, and finally to its use in the psychotherapeutic process.

The Freedom of the Playspace
The Function of the Enchanted Space

The play activity in the fantasy driven, magical playspace is not yet infused with reality. It is completely unbounded, untamed, ‘affect-me’ driven and expressed through ‘me-filled’ action, non-linear language, through the ‘rhythm’ of being (vitality affects). It is vitality itself, and if the qualities of the playspace make the transition into the intimate space, into the self, we have the basis for Korner’s “liveliness”.

Korner’s integrative work on liveliness is congruent with a mechanism that underlines the experience of enchantment:

To accept that an emergent or pre-representational self is a continuing aspect of experience throughout life may be to accept that shifting temporal forms and patterns represent an ongoing mental experience that colours lived reality. (Korner 2000).

Both the pre-representational and the early representational magic of the playspace manifest as an enchanting tone in the mature self. This process captures the essential movement of psychic organizations: from simple towards more complex forms and according to the continuity principle. At times, through unconscious activation of a schema, the experience of an enchanted world rushes into awareness, highlighting something in the presence.

What a wonderful mechanism to create aliveness when we need it, and what a creative space to be utilized! Karl Jung attributed the elaboration of his life work, for example, to his early experiences of play and fantasy:

All my works all my creative activity, has come from those initial fantasies and dreams which began in 1912, almost fifty years ago. Everything that I accomplished in later life was already contained in them, although at first only in the form of emotions and images (1963) .

In the experience of enchantment something very interesting is happening to self-boundaries. Because of the very high level of absorption in the activity and the environment, the self fills with the other, with the external, and perceives that to be almost as alive as the self itself. “We seem to see into the life of things,” wrote Hobson, but the “we” at this instance takes secondary role to the ‘them’ because we are absorbed. In the enchanted space we occupy the world so much that there is no room for us to be in the way. But it is the ‘we’ that holds the experience. Is that what the mystics are referring to when they talk about ‘unity consciousness’?

Ken Wilber in his book, “No Boundary” argues that even to think about the ‘seer’, that ‘sees’ the ‘seen’ is illusory. In his view “whenever we look for a self apart from experience, it vanishes into experience”. This thinking assumes the presence of an ever-evolving absolute or ultimate reality that everything and everyone is a part of. Just like in the previously quoted ideas about the unconscious (Bion's 0, Eigen’s Kabalistic Ein Soph, Grotstein’s ‘god within’). Could it be that the enchantment experience is a window to that ‘already- there-experience’ and provides us with a minute insight into the ‘otherworld’? I don’t know. The quality of engagement with this world that springs out of the enchanted space is however one of intimacy, warmth, and joy. It is very personal, very ‘me’.

The need for a counterpoint to the ratio-dominated linear reality is clearly put forward in the psychotherapy literature. John H.Riker’s beautiful paper, “The Life of the Soul” (2003) approaches the same need from a more philosophical vantage point. He defines a balanced life as an “erotic life”. Erotic life comes about when the “life of desire” and the “proper self-generating motion of the soul” is integrated. Eros here is an organising-unifing principle of the soul and when “awakened, it gathers the soul's parts, makes us feel whole, and infuses us with the most profound expression of the self”. “Plato says, a great daimon - a divine spark longing to unite with ever more transcendent forms of beauty”. We need to balance our “need to be emotionally spontaneous and playful vs. the need to be serious and rationally plan our lives in order to have a life.” Experiences of enchantment do not make life erotic, but contribute to the balance that is needed.

Therapeutic Implications

I believe that the enchanted space is therapeutic, and I connect its healing value to its enlivening effect, to its hedonic tone and to its intimate quality

Actively accessing enchanting images, memories, fantasies in many modalities of psychological intervention have a well-defined and well-deserved place. In Psychoanalytic traditions, particularly in the Jungian tradition for instance active imagination as a technique, and fostering fantasy thinking is well known and documented. This essay cannot be written without a tribute to Karl Jung whose whole working life was a fruitful journey into the integrated world of “transcendent mystery” and the “hard facts” of observation.

Here I would like to focus on Psychotherapies that do not use special regressive techniques but create conditions for the person’s own inner life to unfold in the therapeutic process. I want to draw on the Conversational Model particularly, believing, that the creation of an intimate space and within that the positive qualities of the playspace are inherently facilitated in this modality.
I also favour the ideas of some relational analysts, who indirectly facilitate the enchantment space with their special view of the role of unconscious processes. Overall, all that we consider important in the therapeutic setting, in the frame, and in the therapist’s empathic stand, are in service of the development of the enchanted space.

Without going into much detail about the right ambience of the environment and the role of the therapeutic relationship in the process, let us consider some of the main characteristics of the therapeutic setting from an ‘enchanting’ point of view:

Ideally, the therapist represents a quiet, accepting, reassuring presence. There is a safe, connected relationship that permeates the space. The physical environment is safe, reliable, private and has a warm ambience about it. Preferably it is physically comforting, aesthetically pleasing, where beauty and colour are also represented in a ‘Zen’ arrangement of ornaments, plants, and interesting objects. The whole environment is constructed for deep engagement, a shared exploration, and specifically, for ‘play’.

One day I entered the room of one of my supervisors and my gaze fell on a side table that had a few objects arranged in peculiar manner. The ‘gestalt’ created a beautiful and warm ambience. There were only a few simple objects: a pot plant, some ornaments, a candle and an oil-burner, but together they formed a corner of enchantment. Another one of my supervisors had a painting in the consulting room with a cavalcade of stunning pastel colours painted into a landscape. That painting also radiated the tone of enchantment. Well, it did to me. The therapist’s own capacity for enchantment, his ability to balance both his role as an observer and his role as a participant, provide a background for the experience of the client. As Coleridge noted:

The union of deep feeling with profound thought, the fine balance of truth in observing with the imaginative faculty, in modifying the objects observed; and above all the original gift of spreading the tone, the atmosphere, and with it the depth and height of the ideal world around forms, incidents and situations, of which, for the common view, custom had bedimmed all lustre, had dried up the sparkle, the dew drops .

The psychotherapist has to be able to hold and integrate both poles in such a way that the subject of observation will not diminish into the meaningless, and the obvious.

The following story is a good example for this special exchange.

In one of our seminars in my training group we had a practice session in applying ‘Coupling’, ‘Amplification’ and ‘Representation’ (Meares) as transformational techniques in the therapy process. We partnered up with each other and Partner ‘A’ had to tell the other about his morning. A mundane enough activity, most of the time. I thought! My partner, Greg, recounted the following experience: He woke up to a certain sound as his cat was rattling the flip door going in and out of the house. It was freezing cold, he put something warm on, and made his way to the kitchen, to cook some porridge. He looked through the window and saw frost outside. He dressed, had breakfast and left for work.

As I was listening intently to his recall, my mind was creating the following ‘representation’ of his experience: “Greg opened his eyes under the warm cover and listened for the familiar sweet sounds of his cat playing with the flip door. It was relatively warmer in the room, then, the cat decided to make his way out of the house to start the day. The sound of the flipping door was gently breaking the silence of the night. It was all snowy white outside, and the crispy cold air served as a contrast to the hot steamy porridge that Greg has started to cook in the kitchen. The smell of the cinnamon and honey on the hot bowl filled the house and Greg felt the warmth of his woollen jumper against his skin. The beauty of the white garden as he looked out and the crispy clean air was magical and inviting him to go outside and start the day.”

I told ‘my’ story of his story to Greg, and quite miraculously, his experience was transformed, reflecting my representation of his story. In the relationship, the two of us together, created ‘our’ story of enchantment. In play, we transformed an experience.
Peter Lomas writes about the importance of therapists fostering the sense of the creative, the mystical, and the marvellous in themselves:
Those who come to a psychotherapist for help have become, to a greater or lesser extent, disenchanted with life; they have lost their sense of wonder. One way of conceiving the therapist's task is to say that the aim should be to restore, as far as possible, this sense of wonder. To achieve this requires us, amongst other things, to try to ensure that we do not ourselves adopt a stance that enables wonder to slip out of the room.

Ogden describes a somewhat similar phenomenon with the use of ‘Reverie’. He considers the therapist’s reverie experiences an essential part of the process of analysis as they metaphorically inform the therapist about the unconscious aspect of the therapeutic conversation.

Reverie, like the manifest content of dreams, is an aspect of conscious experience that is intimately connected with unconscious experience. One must struggle to ‘hold on to’ one's reverie experience before it is ‘re-claimed’ by the unconscious.

Some of the previously mentioned relational views of the unconscious also fit in with the idea of the self being enriched, enlivened by the emerging process that is being facilitated in therapy. Therapy “facilitates the flow of unconscious functioning and emotional digestion” (Safran)

Steven Mitchell (2000) describes the more up-to-date (versus the original Freudian idea of the primary process) idea of the therapeutic goal in relation to the unconscious:

The goal of analysis is thus not to tame primary process through secondary process and to learn to live within the constraints of the reality principle, but rather to re-establish the link between primary and secondary process, so that life becomes revitalized and alive.

The Conversational Model of therapy with the metaphor of play, and the creation of the playspace, as the centrepiece of the model, serves as an ideal therapeutic context in which to facilitate the appearance of enchantment. The metaphoric language; the techniques of transformational support (coupling, amplification, representation); the therapist’s empathic and resonating participation; the work in the transference, all assist the gradual appearance of a more absorbed, more lively inner process. Meares argues that in fact one of the main ‘active ingredients’ of the therapeutic process is the facilitation of the associative, reverie-type mental flow by the therapist. I believe that the very selection of the responded content (here, the enchantment space) by the therapist, holds a generative capacity itself. When the client’s enchantment experiences are responded to with empathy, with validation, curiosity and affective matching, the resonated segment of the client’s experience expands. Deepening, amplification occurs, or simply, the experience becomes conscious.

Conclusions

This paper concludes that the magical fantasy-infused worldview of the child in health and during a successful therapeutic process can be remembered and experienced in a mature and integrated form, as an ‘enchanted space’. The memory, or the therapeutic creation of the playspace-affect-tone when fostered, becomes a valuable self-soothing, self-regulating mechanism and a creative force in the service of various self-functions. The activation of the enchanted space is likely to occur when metaphoric similarities between past and present stimulate a memory-complex outside of awareness. The enchanted space has a vitalising effect on the self-system and its creative potential is to be harnessed.

On a more philosophical note, the ‘enchanted space’ contributes to the ultimate balance of the “soul”, as John Riker writes: “But the glow of Las Vegas is not a genuine radiance. It is a siren luring us away from our proper journeys, luring us from ever returning to Ithaca. It was Eros - for Penelope, for his homeland, for his own wholeness - which kept Odysseus on his journey, and Eros which keeps us on ours. When we fill with Eros we become radiantly beautiful and our souls are alive with life.” (Riker 2003)

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