Abstract

BYINGTON, Carlos Amadeu Botelho. An assessment of expressive techniques from the perspective of symbolic psychology: Presentation of the "marionettes of the self" technique. Junguiana [online]. 2022, vol.40, n.2, pp. 115-134. ISSN 2595-1297.

The author compares exclusively verbal dynamic psychotherapy with psychotherapy that also employs expressive techniques within a symbolic and transferential framework. As a result, expressive techniques are considered to substantially increase the potential of symbolic elaboration, due to the fact that symbolic meanings are activated to a greater extent and depth, along with a greater possibility of being experienced. The less participative and more verbal technique is compared with the more participative and less verbal technique and the second one is favored due to a greater production of meanings, a greater possibility for the therapist to exercise their vocation and creativity, the patient's greater cooperation in the therapy and a greater chance of the therapy's (including the therapist's) Shadow arising and being elaborated. Attention is drawn to the great danger of the projection of the Transcendent Function onto the analyst becoming defensive in exclusively verbal and interactive therapy. The author concludes with a warning about the need for caution in the use of expressive techniques, as precisely due to their power to energize symbols and psychic functions, they can exacerbate defenses and worsen clinical conditions. In the second part, the author describes the expressive technique of the Marionettes of the Self and attributes its originality to its scope, which includes the transferential relationship. The characteristics of its parts and its assembly are described and its use recommended for therapeutic and pedagogical purposes in regar teaching or supervision. Finally, in the third part, the author considers the restrictions on the active participation of the conscious in psychodynamic therapy and basically attributes them to its reductionism to the unconscious, both by Freud (repression and the Id) and by Jung (the collective unconscious). Based on the proposal to expand the concept of archetype to also encompass the conscious and the concept of symbol to also encompass the objective dimension, the author proposes the symbolic elaboration from the perspective of both the conscious and the unconscious. Due to this expansion, the author theorizes that behavioral and cognitive techniques and even psychopharmacotherapy may also be used as expressive techniques of dynamic psychotherapy when they are exercised within the symbolic and transferential perspective. ■

Keywords : Expressive techniques; Exclusively verbal psychotherapy; Marionettes of the Self; Transference; Behaviorist Theory; Cognitive Theory; Psychopharmacotherapy; Conscious Archetype; Subject and Object in the Symbol.

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