“A life-changing experience!"
~A Former Seminar Participant

Beyond the Analytic Attitude

The Poiesis of Encounter and the Way of the Mystic

A Seminar for Psychotherapists and Analysts
​
​Amelio A. D'Onofrio, PhD

Introduction and Overview

“Relationality
​is the substance of the universe."
~Carlo Rovelli

“Poeisis lets beings be."
~Martin Heidegger

​“We listen with our character."
~Peter Wilberg

​“I do not ask the wounded person how he feels,
I myself become the wounded person.”
~Walt Whitman
          In this seminar, we will explore how contemporary psychotherapy, shaped by an Enlightenment inheritance of observation, objectivity, and control, has grown increasingly estranged from the very depths it seeks to address. While this epistemological stance has yielded important clinical and research advances, it has also truncated our experience of the psyche, constrained our imagination, and distanced us from mystery, wonder, and our ontological ground. The central thesis of this seminar is that to respond adequately to the suffering of our time, psychotherapy must move beyond the analytic attitude narrowly conceived, and reclaim the poetic, relational, and mystical dimensions of human transformation.
          Our guiding intuition is simple yet radical: that human beings are not only objects of study but living events of Being; that what heals in psychotherapy is not technique alone, but the quality of presence, the courage to meet, and a certain poetic and mystical openness to what would emerge if we did not rush to control it.
          At the heart of this reorientation is poiesis: the creative unfolding of personhood that occurs through relational encounter and the unconcealment of Being. Rather than understanding the unconscious solely as a repository of dark, destructive drives, we will propose that it is also an organ of perception and transformation — a subtle instrument through which the soul poetically metabolizes experience and offers us access to a deep and healing wisdom. Poiesis, in this sense, is not an aesthetic embellishment to clinical work but the very process through which the psyche unfolds and becomes—where it dies to old configurations and is reborn into new forms of meaning and w/holeness.
          The seminar unfolds in five movements each elaborating a facet of this poetic, mystical reorientation:

Monday, July 20, 2026 (Welcome and Opening Session 9:30am - 1:00pm)

Poiesis and the Unfolding of W/holeness

Opening Conversation​

“Being is nothing less but being one."
~Hannah Arendt

“Being means: to stand in the light, to appear, to enter into unconcealment.”
~Martin Heidegger

“The unfolding is driven by the whole."
~Christopher Alexander

​“Poetry communicates before it is understood."
~T. S. Eliot

“If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you.
If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you."
~The Gospel of Thomas

“Help me to be more of who I am by being more of who you are with me."
~Peter Wilberg

​“In ways that not be doctrinal, strong poems are always omens of resurrection."
~Harold Bloom
          The first movement, “Poiesis and the Unfolding of W/holeness,” situates the argument within a critique of our post-Enlightenment epistemology. Modern culture has increasingly treated reality as that which can be measured, categorized, and controlled, ignoring whatever does not submit to this logic or relegating it to the register of the “Imaginary”. This has led to a sort of forgetfulness of Being, a reification of the human, producing a pervasive sense of hollowness and alienation. Psychopathology, seen from this vantage, is not merely a cluster of symptoms but an expression of this ontological exile: a forgetting of our pre-ontological sense of unity and deeper connection to others, the world, and our most authentic selves.
          In response, we propose that psychotherapy must reclaim a poetic and noetic mode of knowing. Poiesis is presented as the psyche’s way of working through the inevitable experiences of fragmentation and despair, transforming them into forms of meaning that can sustain renewed life. The task of therapy is thus reframed not primarily as symptom reduction, but as giving suffering a voice — enabling it to speak itself into new forms through image, metaphor, narrative, and silence.​
Amelio A. D'Onofrio, PhD
​Instructor​

Tuesday, July 21, 2025 (9:30am - 1:00pm)

Encounter: Dancing into the In-Betweenness of Experience

Opening Conversation

“All real living is meeting."
~Martin Buber

“The mind begins as a shared mind."
~Vittorio Gallese

“To become oneself is to fail to realize wholeness."
​~Soren Kierkegaard

​“One realizes oneself as a self only as one takes the attitude of the other."
~Margaret Mead

“What cannot be communicated to the (m)other cannot be communicated to the self."
~John Bowlby

“All saying must be balanced by unsaying and knowing must be humbled by unknowing.”
~Richard Rohr

​“The alternative to being is reacting, and reacting interrupts being and annihilates."
~Donald Winnicott

​“Being human defines itself from out of a relation to what is as a whole.”
~Martin Heidegger

​“The primary word ‘I-Thou' can only be spoken with the whole being."
~Martin Buber

“How can one understand that part of you which does the understanding?"
~The Upanishads

“It takes a lifetime to learn to meet others and to hold your ground when you meet them. "
~Maurice Friedman

“Influence is simply a transference of personality, emotive,
giving away what is most precious to one's self, and its exercise produces, and, it may be, a reality of loss."
~Oscar Wilde

“It is only by empathy that we know the existence of psychic life other than our own."
~Sigmund Freud
          The second movement, “Encounter: Dancing into the In-Betweenness of Experience,” turns to relational ontology and the primacy of encounter. Drawing on Buber’s I–Thou relation, Winnicott’s transitional space, Bion’s “O”, and psychoanalytic notions of reverie, the analytic third, and psychic overlap, we explore psychotherapy as a fundamentally inter-human event in which both participants are changed. The question is posed: Is psychotherapy chiefly a science of observing others, or a participatory art of being-with in which the therapist risks influence, loss, and transformation?
          Here, the therapist is conceived not as a detached observer but as witness and co-traveler, one who stands guard over the solitude of the other while offering confirmation — an ontological “Yes” that allows the patient to exist more fully. The analytic third is examined as a shared field of becoming, in which unity and separateness interpenetrate and something new comes into being that belongs to neither therapist nor patient alone.

Wednesday, July 22, 2026 (9:30am - 1:00pm)

The Clearing, the The Gaze of Freedom, and the Guardianship of the Open

Opening Conversation

“You've always looked at me with the gaze of freedom: ‘go, be free'.”
~A Patient

​“I hold this to be the highest task of two people:
​that each should stand guard over the solitude of the other."
​~Rainer Maria Rilke
 
“It felt shelter to speak to you."
~Emily Dickinson

“The first corollary of truth is to let something be. The essence of truth is freedom."
~Martin Heidegger

​​“The appearing of truth can shine in all its beauty only if there is an open region laid out to receive it.”
~David Levin

​​“Whenever the gaze is attracted and moved by desire, it seeks to master and possess."
​~David Levin

“One condition for a regression to dependence is, then, the analyst's frame of mind."
~Christopher Bollas

​​“Willingness notices wonder and bows in some kind of reverence to it."
​~Gerald May
​
​“The clearing is so important because it offers a space for desire before it knows its object."
~David Levin

“Mastery must yield to mystery."
~Gerald May

“The clearing, the opening, is not only free for brightness and darkness,
but also for resonance and echo, for sounding and the diminishing of sound.
The clearing is the open for everything that is present and absent."
~David Levin

​“Memory and desire generate sensuous greed.”
~Wilfred Bion

​“Everything divided and different belongs to the same world."
~C. G. Jung
          The third movement, “The Clearing, the Gaze of Freedom, and the Guardianship of the Open” focuses on perception: the therapist as clearing in which previously unthinkable aspects of experience may appear. Building on Heidegger’s notion of the clearing and aletheia (unconcealment), we ask what kind of gaze is required for therapeutic transformation. Is our clinical gaze fundamentally grasping, objectifying, and diagnostic, or can it become ontologically generous — a gaze that “lets beings be,” that allows the patient’s being to come forth on its own terms?
          This section reconsiders the psychoanalytic and philosophical critiques of the gaze as oppressive, while also highlighting its healing potential. A primordial, receptive gaze can caress, retrieve, and call forth what is exiled within the patient, bringing it back into the brightness of shared seeing. Central here is the attitude of Gelassenheit, a letting-go of willful control in favor of willingness, humility, and openness to what presents itself. The therapist becomes not the master of meaning, but the guardian of an open space in which meaning can gradually reveal itself.

Thursday, July 23, 2026 (9:30 - 1:00pm)

Silence and Listening: The Poetics of Attunement

Opening Conversation

“Kindness is necessary for perception.”
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

“To put it bluntly: any analyst who really listens to his or her patient
cannot be rigidly committed to any theoretical model."
~Salman Ahktar

“He learned from [the river] continually. Above all, he learned how to listen , to listen with a still heart,
with a waiting soul, without passion, without desire, without judgement, without opinions."
​~Herman Hesse, Siddhartha

“For many people, silence is the sound of death; its open quality,
a clearing where there is nothing for hearing to hold on to, is an experience of unbearable anxiety.
​And not the gift of a resting place...for the quiet recovery of a weary soul."
~David Levin

“The ear is the most spiritually determined of our senses."
~Soren Kierkegaard

“Only he who already understands can listen."
~Martin Heidegger 

“Hear the way my mind works without saying it should work another way.”
-Evelyn Schwaber

“Only someone who knows how to remain essentially silent can really talk—and act essentially."
-Soren Kierkegaard

“Thanksgiving must belong to the essential character of perception."
​~David Levin

“There is a listening that works this way: a listening that is responsible for creating what it hears--
a listening, for example, with the powerto cause or to alleviate the very suffering it hears."
~David Levin

​“You cannot hear me because you cannot tolerate being without an ‘I'. I cannot tolerate it either--that is why I am in pain.
You want me to ‘share' my pain, you want to ‘empathize' with me but you do not really want to feel it--
you know it would overwhelm your ‘I'."
​~Peter Wilberg
          The fourth movement, “Silence and Listening: The Poetics of Attunement,” turns to silence and listening as central acts of therapeutic poiesis. In a culture saturated with noise, speed, and constant commentary, deep listening has become a rare and revolutionary act. Yet without it, there can be no genuine encounter, no unfolding of the unsaid. We will suggest that listening is not merely a technique but a mode of being that draws on the whole person — cognitive, affective, bodily, and spiritual. To listen with a still, waiting inner openness is to dwell in the clearing where meaning has not yet taken form, and where both therapist and patient may experience anxiety, emptiness, or the fear of non-being.
          This section develops the idea of a listening that does more than register content: a listening that, in some sense, co-creates what it hears. Such listening can exacerbate or alleviate suffering, depending on its quality. Concepts like reverie, tacit knowing, and “listening from below” are discussed as ways of attending to the unsaid, the silenced, and the not-yet-speakable. Silence is reframed not as a failure or impasse, but as a necessary dimension of grace — a space in which the memory of wholeness and the possibility of new life can be quietly mobilized.

Thursday evening: Closing Dinner In Gubbio

Friday, July 24, 2026 (9:30 - 1:00pm)

An Epistemology of Faith: Becoming 'O' and the Way of the Mystic

Opening Conversation

​“We say that people are looking for meaning in life.
No. People are looking for the experience of being alive!”
~Joseph Campbell

​“Only one who is completely unified can receive unity."
~Martin Buber

“What is in question is a transformation in the way of being.”
~Martin Heidegger
​​
“If our own sense of identity is certain, then its loss within
the clinical space is essential to the patient’s discovery of himself."
 ~Christopher Bollas

“Faith is more how to believe that what to believe."
​~Richard Rohr

“The analyst has to become infinite by the suspension of memory and desire. "
​~Wilfred Bion

“All human nature, vigorously, resists grace, because grace changes us and the change is painful."
~Flannery O'Connor

“​There is a hatred of having to learn by experience at all,
and lack of faith in the worth of such a kind of learning.”
​~Wilfred Bion

​“The  ‘gravitas'  of the counsellor, analyst or therapist, their capacity to ground themselves
​in their own bodyhood, is essentially a capacity to bear the weight of their own mortality and that of the client.
This means approaching the encounter with another human as if it were our last or their last mortal encounter.”
~Peter Wilberg

​​“Spirit is Life. It flows thru the death of me endlessly like a river unafraid of becoming the sea. "
​~Gregory Corso
         The final movement, “An Epistemology of Faith: Becoming ‘O’ and the Way of the Mystic,” gathers these strands into a vision of psychotherapy grounded in a mode of knowing that is neither purely empirical nor merely speculative, but participatory and faith-filled. Drawing primarily on Bion’s concept of O (ultimate reality or truth, approached only through transformation), we argue that the deepest truths of the patient’s life can be known only by entering, however partially, into a shared field of experience—a sort of “we-mode” of mentalizing (Fonagy).
          Faith, in this context, is not assent to dogma but trust in the existence of a buried, latent unity within the patient; trust in the relational field as capable of revealing it; and trust in one’s own capacity to bear not-knowing, regression, and chaos without collapsing. This “epistemology of faith” acknowledges the limits of conceptual mastery and reframes psychotherapy as an act of radical hospitality toward what is unknown, strange, and other — in the patient, in the therapist, and in reality itself.
          We will conclude by suggesting that such a poetic, mystical reorientation does not abandon analytic rigor; rather, it deepens and widens it. Technique and interpretation find their rightful place within a larger horizon of Being, encounter, and faith. Psychotherapy is thus reclaimed as a living poetics of existence, a small but real clearing in which w/holeness may begin to unfold — for both patient and therapist.
          Join us in Gubbio this summer for a deep dive into the paradoxes of the human condition reflected so powerfully in the poetic movements of the therapeutic process. Our conversation will stimulate and energize and is sure to deepen our relationship with ourselves and to the work. Be part of a growing community of depth psychotherapists committed to pursuing clinical truth, expanding personal horizons, and who are willing to share themselves in the service of fostering mutual growth. You’ll be challenged and inspired to broaden your understanding of the therapeutic process and deepen your participation in the renewal of your patients’ lives.
          And, while there are very few bankable guarantees in life, your leap of faith in joining our adventure, is sure to enkindle hope in your own possibilities and leave you renewed and re-inspired!

*The full itinerary for the week, including breakfast and lunch schedules, can be found on the General Information page.

Sources for Inspiration and Conversation
​
Selected Bibliography*

Selected Bibliography for 2026 Seminar

  • Agassi, J. B. (Ed.) (1999). Martin Buber on Psychology and Psychotherapy. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press.
  • Ammaniti, M., & Gallese, V. (2014). The birth of intersubjectivity: Psychodynamics, neurobiology, and the self. New York: Norton.
  • Arendt, H. (1996). Love and Saint Augustine. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
  • Bloom, H. (1973). The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry (2nd ed.). New York: Oxford.
  • Bar Nes, A. (2022). Psychoanalysis, mysticism, and the problem of epistemology: Defining the indefinable. London: Routledge. 
  • Bion, W. R. (1962/1984). Learning from experience. London: Karnac.
  • Bion, W. R. (1981). Notes on memory and desire. In R. Langs (Ed.), Classics in psychoanalytic technique (pp. 259-260). New York: Jason Aronson. 
  • Bion, W. (1983). Attention and interpretation. Northvale: Aronson.
  • Bion, W. (1984). Transformations. London: Routledge.
  • Bion, W. (1988).  Two papers: The grid and caesura. London: Routledge.
  • Bion, W. (2005). The Tavistock lectures. London: Karnac.
  • Bion, W. (2005). The Italian Seminars. London: Karnac.
  • Bollas, C. (1987). The shadow of the object: Psychoanalysis of the untought known. NY: Columbia University Press.
  • Bollas, C. (1999). The mystery of things. London: Routledge. 
  • ​Bromberg, P. (1998). Standing in the spaces: Essays on clinical process, trauma, and dissociation. Hillsdale, NJ: The Analytic Press.
  • Buber, M. (1955). Between man and man. Boston: Beacon Press. 
  • Buber, M. (1958). I and Thou (2nd). NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons.
  • Buber, M. (1996). Ecstatic Confessions: The Heart of Mysticism. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press.
  • Campbell, J. (1968). The mystic vision. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
  • Cannon, B. (1991). Sartre and psychoanalysis: An existentialist challenge to clinical metatheory. Kansas City: University of Kansas Press.
  • Civitarese, G. (2016). Truth and the unconscious in psychoanalysis. London: Routledge.
  • Dalle Pezze, B. (2006). Heidegger on Gelassenheit. Minerva--An Internet Journal of Philosophy, 10, 94-122.
  • Davis, W. A. (1989). Inwardness and existence: Subjectivity in/and Hegel, Heidegger, Marx, and Freud. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
  • Dreyfus, H. L. (1991). Being-in-the-world: A commentary of Heidegger's Being and Time, Div. 1. Cambridge, MA: MIT.
  • Dourley, J. P. (2014). Jung and his mystics. London: Routledge.
  • Eigen, M. (1998). The psychoanalytic mystic. London: Free Association Press.
  • ​Eigen, M. (2018). Faith. London: Routledge.
  • Friedman, M. (1985). The Healing dialogue in psychotherapy. New York: Jason Aronson.
  • Friedman, M. (1992) Dialogue and the Human Image: Beyond Humanistic Psychology. Newbury Park: Sage.
  • Freud, S., In Strachey, J., In Freud, A., & In Richards, A. (1966). The Standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud. London: Hogarth Press.
  • Grotstein, J. S. (2000). Who is the dreamer and who dreams the dream. Hillsdale, NJ: The Analytic Press.
  • Grotstein. J. S. (2004). The seventh servant: Implications of a truth drive in Bion's theory of 'O'. International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 85, 1081-1101.
  • Grotstein, J. S. (2009 “…but at the same time and on another level…”: Psychoanalytic theory and technique in the Kleinian/Bionian Mode (vol. 1). London: Routledge.
  • Grotstein, J. S. (2024). A beam of intense darkness: Wilfred Bion's Legacy to Psychoanalysis. London: Routledge.
  • Harrang, C. (2023). On Grotstein's 'truth' in Bion's theory of 'O'. The American Journal of Psychoanalysis.
  • Harrang, C. (2023). Truth and lies: Psychoanalytic perspectives. The American Journal of Psychoanalysis.
  • Heidegger, M. (1927/1962). Being and time. (J. Macquarrie and E Robinson, trans.). San Francisco: HarperCollins.
  • Heidegger, M. (1959). An introduction to metaphysics. New Haven: Yale.
  • Heidegger, M. (1971). Poetry, language, thought (A. Hofstadter, trans.). New York: Harper Colophon Books.
  • Heidegger, M. (1977). Basic Writings, (David Krell, Ed.). New York: Harper & Row.
  • Heidegger, M. (2001). Zollikon seminars. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
  • Jaffe’, A. (1989). Was C. G. Jung a Mystic? And other Essays. Einsiedeln, Switzerland: Daimon Verlag.
  • Kakar, S. (1991). The analyst and the mystic: Psychoanalytic reflections on religion and mysticism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
  • Kleinberg-Levin, D. M. (2008). Before the voice of reason: Echoes of responsibility in Merleau-Ponty’s and Levinas’s Ethics. New York: SUNY Press.
  • Kleinberg-Levin, D. M. (2020). Heidegger's phenomenology of perception: An Introduction (Vol. 1). Lanham: Rowan & Littlefield.
  • Kleinberg-Levin, D. M. (2021). Heidegger's Phenomenology of perception: learning to see and hear hermeneutically (Vol. II).  Lanham: Rowan & Littlefield.
  • Levin, D. (1985). The body's recollection of being: Phenomenological psychology and the deconstruction of nihilism. New York: Routledge.
  • Levin, D. (1988). The opening of vision: Nihilism and the post-modern situation. New York: Routledge.
  • Levin, D. (1989). The listening self: Personal growth, social change, and the closure of metaphysics. London: Routledge.
  • Levine, S. K. (1992). Poiesis: the language of psychology and the speech of the soul. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.
  • May, G. G. (1982). Will and Spirit: A contemplative psychology. New York: Harper & Row.​
  • McGilchrist, I. (2009). The master and his emissary: The divided brain and the making of the western world. New Haven: Yale University Press.
  • McGilchrist, I. (2021). The matter with things (Vols. 1 & 2). London: Perspectiva
  • McManus, D. (Ed.) (2015). Heidegger, authenticity and the self. London: Routledge.
  • Meissner, W. W. (1984). Psychoanalysis and religious experience. New Haven: Yale.
  • Meng, H. & Freud, E. L. (Eds) (1963). Sigmund Freud: Psychoanalysis and faith: Dialogues with the Reverand Oskar Psister. New York: Basic Books.
  • Mitchell, S. A., & Aron, L. (Eds.). (1999). Relational psychoanalysis: The emergence of a tradition. Hillsdale, NJ: The Analytic Press.
  • Muktananda (1999). The perfect relationship: the guru and the disciple. New York: SYDA Foundation.
  • Neumann, E. (1968), Mystical man. In J. Campbell (Ed.) The mystic vision: Papers from the Eranos yearbooks.​ Princeton: Princeton University Press.
  • O'Donohue, J. (2004). Beauty: Rediscovering the true sources of compassion, serenity, and hope. New York: Harper Perennial.
  • Ogden, T. (1982). Projective identification and therapeutic technique. New York: Jason Aronson.
  • Ogden, T. (1997). Reverie and Interpretation. Lanham: Rowan & Littlefield.
  • Parsons, W. B. (1999). The enigma of the oceanic feeling: Revisioning the psychoanalytic theory of mysticism. New York: Oxford University Press.
  • Petruccelli, J. (Ed.). (2010). Knowing, not-knowing, and sort-of-knowing: Psychoanalysis and the experience of Uncertainty. London: Routledge.
  • Richardson, W. J. (2003). Heidegger: Through phenomenology to thought (4th). ​ New York: Fordham University Press.
  • Richardson, W. J. (2003). Heidegger and Psychoanalysis? Natureza Humana, 5, 9-38.
  • Ricoeur, P. (1970). Freud and philosophy: An essay on interpretation. (D. Savage, trans.). New Haven: Yale University Press.
  • Ricoeur, P. (2012). On Psychoanalysis. Cambridge: Polity.
  • Rohr, R. (2009). The naked now: Learning to see as the mystics see. New York: Crossroad Publishing.
  • Wilberg, P. (2004). The therapist as listener: Martin Heidegger and the missing dimension of counseling and psychotherapy Training. Eastbourne, Sussex: New Gnosis Publications.
  • Wilberg, P. (2013). Being and listening: Counselling, psychoanalysis, and the ontology of listening. Whistable, Great Britain: New Yoga Publications.
  • Wilberg, P. (2015). Heidegger, medicine, & 'scientific method'. Eastbourne, Sussex: New Gnosis Publications.
  • Winnicott, D. (1958/1992). Through pediatrics to psycho-analysis: Collected papers. New York: Brunner/Mazel.
  • Winnicott, D.W. (1949). Hate in the Counter-Transference. Int. J. Psycho-Anal., 30:69-74
  • Winnicott, D. W. (1965). Maturational processes and the facilitative environment. New York: International Universities Press.
  • Winnicott, D. (1971/2005) Playing with reality. London: Routledge.​
  • Zimmerman, M. E. (1981). Eclipse of the self: The development of Heidegger's concept of authenticity.  Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press.

The Gubbio Seminars

Gubbio, Italy