12/07/2025
Today, December 4, we celebrate the birthday of Thomas H. Ogden (born in the United States, 1946), who turns 79 this year, and who once wrote:
“In one of the clinical illustrations of reverie offered earlier in this paper, I 'half-joked' that I was 'handling' my fiftieth birthday by refusing to believe it. In that example, I was (unconsciously) creating a metaphor for my experience of what was going on between the patient and me. The thoughts and feelings condensed in the half-joke represented a new form that I was giving to the unconscious experience of the patient's and my own 'handling' of that which cannot be controlled (ageing, dying, feeling shame, feeling insane).” p.727
Ogden, T. (1997) Reverie And Metaphor: Some Thoughts On How I Work As A Psychoanalyst. International Journal of Psychoanalysis 78:719-732
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