The relational unconscious — also encountered under the alias 'unconscious-participation' — designates the stratum of psychic life that operates between subjects rather than merely within them: the dynamic, largely unanalyzable field constituted by the mutual influence of two unconscious systems in encounter. Within the depth-psychology corpus this concept occupies a contested and generative position. Jung's foundational formulation in his essay on the transference posited a quaternio of conscious-to-conscious, conscious-to-unconscious, and unconscious-to-unconscious vectors, insisting that the last — the 'a-prime to b-prime couple' — is the most intractable and transformatively potent dimension of any sustained analytic relationship. Stein crystallizes this inheritance, noting that the subterranean unconscious-to-unconscious relationship is 'experienced long before it is, or even can be, analyzed.' Jacoby and Wiener, working from an object-relational and post-Jungian frame respectively, investigate how the analyst's countertransference functions as the primary instrument for registering this field. Ogden (Pat) approaches analogous terrain through the concept of implicit relational knowing — procedural, somatic, and pre-reflective knowing that circulates below the threshold of explicit communication. Jung's earlier concept of participation mystique, theorized through Lévy-Bruhl and elaborated by Neumann, furnishes the archaic substrate: a state of unconscious identity between psyches that the relational unconscious partially recapitulates at greater developmental complexity. The central tension in the corpus runs between those who accent the transformative necessity of this inter-unconscious field and those who regard it as a regressive pull requiring differentiation.
In the library
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the subterranean relationship of unconscious to unconscious. This is an aspect of the relationship that is experienced long before it is, or even can be, analyzed — if indeed it ever is made fully conscious.
Stein, following Jung, identifies the unconscious-to-unconscious dimension of the analytic dyad as the most irreducible and transformatively significant vector of the therapeutic encounter, and the primary locus of the relational unconscious.
Stein, Murray, Transformation Emergence of the Self (Volume 7) (Carolyn, 1998thesis
the dissolution of participation mystique... When there is no consciousness of the difference between subject and object, an unconscious identity prevails. The unconscious is then projected into the object, and the object is introjected into the subject.
Jung defines participation mystique as the archaic form of the relational unconscious — a condition of unconscious identity between psyches prior to ego-differentiation, whose dissolution is the therapeutic goal par excellence.
Jung, C. G., Collected Works Volume 3: The Psychogenesis of Mental Disease, 1907thesis
existence in the uroboros was existence in participation mystique... man was all things at once... Between the hunted animal and the will of the hunter there existed a magical, mystical rapport.
Neumann traces the relational unconscious to its phylogenetic and ontogenetic ground in uroboric participation mystique, where self-other differentiation has not yet emerged and psyche permeates the intersubjective field without boundary.
Neumann, Erich, The Origins and History of Consciousness (Princeton, 2019thesis
within the transferential field, the analyst sinks into a double mental state in which he is at the same time self-reflective and in contact with his inner noetic (dreamlike)... the affective images may autonomously flow into the analytical space, while the egos of analyst and patient still participate.
Alcaro articulates the relational unconscious as a co-imaginative transferential field in which both analyst and patient participate simultaneously at noetic and self-reflective levels, rendering the analytical relationship a shared unconscious process.
Alcaro, Antonio; Carta, Stefano, The 'Instinct' of Imagination: A Neuro-Ethological Approach to the Evolution of the Reflective Mind and Its Application to Psychotherapy, 2019thesis
The dance between therapist and client engages the therapist's unconscious interpretations and somatic and affective reactions, communicated to him- or herself and the client beneath the words... these reactions occur below the surface of awareness.
Ogden (Pat) frames the relational unconscious in somatic-affective terms as a continuous below-awareness dance of mutual implicit communication that constitutes the living texture of the therapeutic relationship.
Ogden, Pat, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Interventions for Trauma and, 2015supporting
I have to be fairly well aware of my own width and length, of my own needs, fantasies and value standards, otherwise they will get projected onto the other person who automatically becomes partly an object of my own.
Jacoby argues that genuine I-Thou relating requires the analyst to disentangle conscious selfhood from the unconscious relational field, distinguishing mature encounter from the regressive merger of participation mystique.
Jacoby, Mario, The Analytic Encounter: Transference and Human Relationship, 1984supporting
the depressed state I am in is a result of my close contact with this particular client. It may be that the client is feeling depressed right now and neither of us was aware of it... my depression is a reflection of his or her depression.
Samuels, via Papadopoulos, documents the relational unconscious operationally through the phenomenon of reflective countertransference — the analyst's psyche unconsciously registering and embodying the client's unacknowledged affective state.
Papadopoulos, Renos K., The Handbook of Jungian Psychology: Theory, Practice and Applications, 2006supporting
Cambray's description of these moments of emergence of the self, where the symmetry in the system is broken, is intrinsic to change... characteristic of the self in development, they presumably happen in the transference, the very individual and complex system of interactions of selves.
Wiener draws on dynamic systems theory to reframe the relational unconscious as an emergent self-organizing field whose transformative potential is realized at the unpredictable edges of the analytic dyad.
Wiener, Jan, The Therapeutic Relationship: Transference, Countertransference, and the Making of Meaning, 2009supporting
we view clients' transferences and our own countertransferences as legacies of attachment in the form of implicit relational knowing, we may find ourselves becoming curious about, rather than interpreting, the relational challenges between us.
Ogden (Pat) reframes transference-countertransference as the relational unconscious made legible through implicit relational knowing — procedural attachment imprints that silently organize the intersubjective field.
Ogden, Pat, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Interventions for Trauma and, 2015supporting
partners with strong emotional ties whose aim seems to be to destroy each other... the destiny of each partner seems to be to inflict psychic torture on the other.
Jacoby illustrates pathological forms of the relational unconscious — compulsive unconscious identification in intimate bonds — where mutual unconscious dynamics override conscious will, trapping partners in destructive symbiosis.
Jacoby, Mario, The Analytic Encounter: Transference and Human Relationship, 1984supporting
The unconscious is not projected any more, and so the primordial participation mystique with things is abolished. Consciousness is no longer preoccupied with compulsive plans but dissolves in contemplative vision.
Jung frames the overcoming of participation mystique — the dissolution of the unconscious relational entanglement with the world — as the telos of psychic maturation, linking the relational unconscious directly to the problem of projection.
Jung, Carl Gustav, Alchemical Studies, 1967supporting
If, below the level of consciousness, our imagination is at work tidying up the chaos of sense experience, at a different level it may... untidy it again.
Wiener uses Warnock's account of imagination to illuminate the countertransferential dimension of the relational unconscious — the analyst's below-conscious meaning-making that continuously reorganizes the shared analytic field.
Wiener, Jan, The Therapeutic Relationship: Transference, Countertransference, and the Making of Meaning, 2009aside
reverie might be thought of as the outcome of the unconscious 'understanding work'... Dreaming and reverie always involve an unconscious internal discourse between 'the dreamer who dreams the dream and the dreamer who understands the dream.'
Ogden (Thomas) positions analytic reverie as a site where the relational unconscious becomes partially accessible — the analyst's dreaming-while-awake as a vehicle through which the inter-unconscious field speaks.
Ogden, Thomas, Reverie and Interpretation, 1997aside