Microfractures in Communication: So What’s the Big Deal?

One of the most important concepts to get working in your own language is captured in this single powerful quote within a  quote:

“… microfractures in communication between patient and analyst are vital because they allow the transference to become ‘the engine of analysis, by contributing raw material from the patient’s internal world and history’.” See  Wilkinson on Microfractures

This observation applies to the transference arising in our personal relationships as well. We all need a way to recognize the raw material which will find a way to present its bill, as Alice Miller observed.

Emotionally charged reactions to what might normally be considered small breakdowns in our communication point directly to the raw material of unfinished emotional business.

In a blur moment, the hurt or offense taken by one or both parties at some level can be understood or seen as an out-picturing of an experiential state scene.

The quote suggests these unintended ruptures, in letting the raw material into the space we hold together, become the engine of the analysis. These are the grist for the mill. While we can always try to do our best, planning for the inevitable microfractures that will show up allows us embrace the blur with awareness and curiosity, not negative judgement. What can we learn about ourselves, each other? (see discussion on getting one’s buttons pushed)

This is another way to understand the positive aspect of “healing only occurs in the blur.” We need to support the necessity of going there with enough consciousness to gain our freedom from the unconsciousness driving the re-enactment of the wounding.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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7 Comments on “Microfractures in Communication: So What’s the Big Deal?”


  1. “Of course I’ll hurt you. Of course you’ll hurt me. Of course we will hurt each other. But this is the very condition of existence. To become spring, means accepting the risk of winter. To become presence, means accepting the risk of absence.”

    The Little Prince
    Antoine de Saint-Exupéry


  2. […] about. What about the unconscious impulse and the defense against it? The Wilkinson discussion of micro-fractures in communication comes to mind. Micro-fractures as manifest content carry a charge reflective of their compromise […]


  3. […] In short, I am proposing conscious enactment as the intention to revisit the blur for the purpose of  surfacing the underlying experiential state driver of the microfracture. […]


  4. […] play in complicating our intimate lives. We want to practice tracking triggering events – microfractures in communications – in the service of discernment of recognizing complexes within the context of their natural […]


  5. […] this perspective, if/when a microfracture in communication pulls us into a blur state, how can we recognize the conflict as meaningful? Might this really be […]


  6. […] together; this is the process for bringing the blur into conscious, symbolic awareness. The microfractures in communication quotes go well with this layer of […]


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