Imagining the Other

Some hallucinations from a therapy

Abstract

I sit opposite my client, a 25-year-old Māori woman. It is our second session. Just in front of her face, as if projected on a screen, is the face of a middle-aged Māori man. I blink; I rub my eyes. The face of the man remains. Is this a projection of mine, a construction of who I imagine her to be? Or is it a communication from her? Or might it be a deceased relative, who needs to be prayed for and asked to leave, as my cultural advisor suggests? 

It is inevitable that Pākehā psychotherapists will translate Māori concepts into a western psychotherapeutic reading; for example, to interpret the last suggestion above as a metaphor for internal object relations. But as with any translation, something is lost, and our apparent understanding masks what we do not know. In fact, our dependence on familiar ways of understanding has many psychotherapeutic, cultural and political implications.