Intersubjectivity as Co-phenomenology: From the Holism of Meaning to the Being-in-the-world-with-others

I outline in this paper a pragmatical approach to meaning. Meaning is defined as a phenomenologically experienced construal. As such, it is a dynamic object whose first evidence comes from the first person rather than the third one. At the same time, the approach assumes that meaning is not an individual creation, but rather an intersubjective one. Origins of meaning are also to be founded not ‘in the head’ of a cognitive system or subject, but in the intersubjective space contingently formed between a subject (S), an other (O) and a common object (R), which they talk about. Approaching this minimal communicative situation therefore requires realizing that the phenomenological dimension is always implied in any intersubjective encounter. The observed synchronized co-feeling among subjects, upon which language comprehension takes place, I call ‘co-phenomenology’. When analyzed in this way, intersubjectivity shows at the same time its social, phenomenological and biological dimensions.

Innen, Außen, Zwischen

The so-called “intersubjective turn” (or “relational turn”) in psychoanalysis is closely associated with the work of Winnicott. It was him who added a new dimension to the psychoanalytic theories of a separate inner world, a dimension focussing on the mediating processes between the separate spheres of psychic and external reality: a space between subject and object, drive and civilisation, Ego and reality — the “potential space” that unconsciously connects our self to the Other as well as to a shared physical and social world we live in. Winnicotts paradoxical notions of the self are traced in this paper and unwrapped from their often enigmatic, developmentally and epistemologically confusing veils: the infant who does not exist without a holding mother; who is not aware of his/her being held because of its evidence, and only has an experience when falling; who him-/herself creates that reality which is already there; who must destroy the object in order to use it; who can only be alone when another person is present. The author, starting from apparently narcissistic phenomena of the media society, rehabilitates the term of “in-between” in contemporary psychoanalytic discussion which for a long time was considered as suspect, as being part of a “non-psychoanalytic” superficial social psychology (as the intersubjective, the interpersonal or the interactive). Under the strong influence of Winnicott, and overarching the different schools, contemporary psychoanalysis is focussing on intersubjectivity and relationality. The paper is an appeal for reformulating classical intrapsychic concepts — including the theory of the unconscious—in intersubjective terms, thus unfolding a relational approach inherent in Freud’s metapsychology.     

'Projective transidentifi cation': An extension of the concept of projective identifi cation

Questions about the concept of projective identifi cation still persist. The author presents the following hypotheses: Klein's traditional view and Bion's extension and revision of it can be thought of as occupying a continuum in reverse. He postulates that Bion's concept of communicative intersubjective projective identifi cation (which the author renames 'projective transidentifi cation') is primary and inclusive of Klein's earlier unconscious, omnipotent, intrapsychic mode but includes Bion's 'realistic' communicative mode as well. The author hypothesizes, consequently, that intersubjective projective identifi cation constitutes both the operation of an unconscious phantasy of omnipotent intrapsychic projective identifi cation solely within the internal world of the projecting subject-in addition to two other processes: conscious and/or preconscious modes of sensorimotor induction, which would include signaling and/or evocation or prompting gestures or techniques (mental, physical, verbal, posturing or priming) on the part of the projecting subject; followed by spontaneous empathic simulation in the receptive object of the subject's experience in which the receptive object is already inherently 'hard-wired' to be empathic with the prompting subject.     

Analysing Gaze in Terms of Subjective and Objective Interpretation: Sartre and Lacan

Considering the Hegelian master–slave dichotomy over the exchange of the gaze, the paper focuses on the issue of vision and visibility, reinterpreted in Sartre’s phenomenological discussions in different ways. The Hegelian emphasis on recognition finds reflection in the treatment of vision as force expressed through visibility in Sartre and as an issue of self recognition in Lacan. Drawing the Hegelian tag with a comparative argument between Sartre and Lacan, the paper focuses on the different perspectives over the concept of gaze or look. It argues that even sharing the same Hegelian legacy regarding the notion of gaze and recognition Sartre and Lacan differs to a considerable extent in their treatment of the impact of gaze. While emphasising more on the phenomenological-existential analysis of the issue of individual recognition Sartre presents gaze as a strong alienating force released from another powerful subject affecting the intersubjective power relation, Lacan, stands on a non-reciprocal relation between seeing and seen by making a difference between the eyes of the subject that looks at and the gaze which is on the side of the object without having any capacity to become a subject. The paper concentrates on these issues over a broader argument on Sartre’s concept of intersubjective gaze.     

The codification of intersubjectivity in the diachronic change <Emphasis Type="Italic">AD locative</Emphasis> &gt; <Emphasis Type="Italic">A</Emphasis>(<Emphasis Type="Italic">D</Emphasis>) <Emphasis Type="Italic">indirect object</Emphasis> in Spanish

The principal aim of this paper is to analyze the relationship between intersubjectivity and grammar. We argue that intersubjectivity represents, on the one hand, a prerequisite for the development of language as a symbolic system, and therefore also for the development of grammar. Furthermore, we attempt to show that language, and especially grammar, codify intersubjectivity. That is to say, grammatical constructions represent the intersubjective interactions that situated agents maintain in different pragmatic contects. We call this phenomenon the meta-representational capacity of language. Our main object of analysis is the development of the ditransitive construction (give something to someone - dar algo a alguien) in the Spanish language. The evolution of this construction makes it clear that there is an important correlation between the degree of complexity of the codified intersubjective interaction and grammatically obligatory nature and the prominence of the grammatical construction that codifies it: the greater the complexity, the greater its obligatoriness, and vice versa.     

States of identity: a perspective drawing upon Fordham's model and infant studies

This paper examines the Jungian concept of identity and distinguishes it from projective identification and participation mystique which also refer to non-differentiation between self and object but involve projective mechanisms. Clinical work by Fordham and a psychoanalytic infant observation are used to illustrate early perceptual operations defined by experimental researches. These operations are understood to be expressions of the primary self which manifest themselves before the structuring necessary for normal projective identification. This paper attempts to describe an intersubjective experience between mother and baby that allows for their separate ways of relating, but does not depend on projective mechanisms that can exist only after there has been adequate development.     

Has Sexuality Anything to Do with Relationality?

This paper discusses sexuality in the framework of relational psychoanalysis. Contemporary psychoanalytic approaches, turning away from drive theory, often abandoned sexuality altogether. This paper calls for a return to the centrality of sexuality in understanding the mind, development, and interpersonal/object relations. The author emphasizes a relational approach that highlights dialectical thinking, the third, and that positions sex and sexuality as the link between the intersubjective and the intrapsychic, highlighting the private, internal, enigmatic, and fantastic realm along with the pragmatic, bidirectional, two-person exchange. The paper discusses how our way of thinking and working clinically with sexuality has shifted accordingly.     

Between private and public: Towards a conception of the transitional subject

Elaborating upon Winnicott’s seminal contributions on the transitional object, the author proposes a conception of a transitional subject in which the patient comes into being simultaneously between private and public, subjective creation and material life, me and not‐me. By anchoring subjective creation in the real world (including the body), the patient creates a basis for authentic psychesoma as well as for both personal and symbolic contributions to the world beyond omnipotence, including the world of other subjects. In this sense, intersubjective life is seen as predicated upon transitionality, with the patient seen as simultaneously coming into being as a distinctly personal subject and, in part, as a symbol. Clinical phenomenology is described and is interpreted with respect to the need within psychoanalysis itself for a third, and for a realm of meaning‐creation that lies beyond privacy, omnipotence, and the dyad.     

The development of the drive object concept in Freud's work: 1905-1915

In 1905 Freud established the idea of an object of an instinctual drive as the basic object concept of psychoanalysis. He also introduced the derivative concepts of object directedness, object choice, and object finding. While taking these steps he simultaneously deemphasized the importance of drive objects in sexual life, contradicted himself on whether drives are autoerotic or object-directed in infancy, and made incompatible statements about whether or not object choice occurs before puberty. Freud's clinical work, reflected especially in the major case reports and a series of papers on fantasy, led to an apparent recognition of complexity in the mental life of children far greater than had been described earlier. The increased attention to and appreciation of mental content in childhood especially augmented Freud's understanding of the role of drive objects, object directedness, and object choice in infancy. This, in turn, led him to postulate a sequence of organizations of sexual life, named according to the zonal drive source plus the mode of object directedness, a process of theory development that continued through 1924. Object choice and, to a lesser extent, object directedness are concepts derived from and dependent upon the concept of drive object. Both require, however, explanatory constructs besides drive constructs. In 1915 Freud defined the term "object" in the context of stating his drive theory. Freud used the term object with several new modifying words during this decade. No new object concept was introduced, however, in this work, although some steps in that direction appeared to be in progress.     

The concept of the self in psychoanalytic theory and its philosophical foundations.

Concepts of "the self" in psychoanalytic theory have important philosophic underpinnings which may not be adequately appreciated. Both self psychology and ego psychology, with their contrasting positions on the self as a mental structure, retrace paths taken by Western philosophy beginning at least with Hume and Descartes. They reflect traditional philosophic questions, notably of a homuncular self internal to consciousness and the isolation of the subject from other selves. Psychoanalysis has not utilized Hegel's conception of the intersubjective origins of the self, in which the self emerges only in an encounter with another subject, although this approach is implicit in the work of Winnicott on the mother-infant dyad. This movement from a one- to a two-person psychology also presents conceptual problems, as illustrated by the psychoanalytic theories of Sartre and Lacan, who take up opposing positions on the status of consciousness and on intersubjectivity in the formation of the self. Sartre's phenomenology, with its emphasis on the questing nature of the subject in search of an identity, resonates with contemporary theories of narcissism in which the painful isolation of self from self-affirming and mirroring objects is central to clinical practice. Lacan's insight into the role of acquisition of language helps us to understand the formation of the subject in pursuit of a virtual selfhood, as Sartre described, but embedded within an intersubjective matrix.     

Weeds on the Ruins: Agency,Compromise Formation,and the Quest for Intersubjective Truth

Using Kundera's metaphor of “weeds on the ruins” to examine the impact of organized destruction of memory on the survival of a people, this paper explores the role of symptoms in negotiating a relational “compromise formation” by tracing their evolution as signifiers of previously dissociated intersubjective knowledge. It suggests that recent theorizing on the mutual constitution of agency and intersubjectivity creates the possibility of resurrecting the dramatic tension that characterized dual drive theory by relocating that tension between the desire to know (oneself, the Other) and the destruction of that desire. To do so, the paper contemplates an internally consistent lens for reconciling the terrain of deficit and dissociation with that of conflict by offering a process-oriented view of agency as “drive” that is rooted between subjective and material contexts. Finally, the paper explores the quest for intersubjective truth as offering a means of living beyond the ubiquity of compromise formation.     

Metapsychology or metapsychologies? Some comments on Paul Denis's paper ‘The drive revisited: mastery and satisfaction’

In this commentary on Paul Denis's paper ‘The drive revisited: mastery and satisfaction’, the author defends the idea of a plurality of metapsychologies that must be contrasted with and distinguished from each other while avoiding incompatible translations between models. In this connection he presents various theoretical approaches to aggression and the death drive, and demonstrates the differences between the drive model and the model underlying the theory of internalized object relations. The author holds that the concept of the internal object differs from Freud's notion of the representation (Vorstellung). He also considers that the imago as defined by Paul Denis in fact corresponds to the concept of the internal object. Lastly, he addresses the complex issue of listening to archaic forms of psychic functioning and their non‐discursive presentation within the analytic process, which affects the transference‐countertransference link.     

Epistemic Objects as Interactive Loci

Contemporary process metaphysics has achieved a number of important results, most significantly in accounting for emergence, a problem on which substance metaphysics has foundered since Plato. It also faces trenchant problems of its own, among them the related problems of boundaries and individuation. Historically, the quest for ontology may thus have been largely responsible for the persistence of substance metaphysics. But as Plato was well aware, an ontology of substantial things raises serious, perhaps insurmountable problems for any account of our epistemic access to such things. Physical things are subject to change, and as such, they are poor objects of knowledge—if knowledge is to be more reliable than mere opinion. There is a reading of Plato’s Theaetetus on which knowledge may be understood as a relation between an epistemic subject and a logos, where logoi are intrinsically dialectical, and where dialectic is a kind of intersubjective activity. Insofar as this epistemology may be attributed to Plato, the project of this paper is Platonic in spirit. It is also, in a sense, Kantian, in that it divorces ontology from the search for things-in-themselves, redirecting our attention from things to objects: epistemic objects. Such objects can be understood, as Maurice Merleau-Ponty proposed, as shared by multiple subjects by virtue of their participation in an intersubjective world, constituted by what Shaun Gallagher calls “participatory sense-making.” On an epistemology constructed in this way, the fact that both epistemic objects and their subject are mutable is no obstacle to knowledge. Far-from-equilibrium systems are forever mutable; at thermodynamic equilibrium, there would be neither subject, nor object. Epistemic objects, on this picture, are metastable loci of interactive potential.     

Surviving in absence--on the preservative and death drives and their clinical utility

This paper offers a new theoretical and clinical look at the death drive in connection with the preservative drive. The author elaborates the flaws she sees in Freud's Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920) and reformulates the transition between Freud's first drive theory and his second one within an implicit object relations theory. Simultaneously with this revised version of drive theory, a structural theory for the realm of healthy self- and object preservation and for pathological or deadened self and object parts is developed, including the devastating effects of trauma. Clinical material from an extended psychoanalysis shows how these concepts can help us understand these patients' absence and "deadness" and rethink the technical challenges they provide.     

Semiotic aspects of the countertransference: Some observations on the concepts of the ‘immediate object’ and the ‘interpretant’ in the work of Charles S. Peirce1

The fi eld of semiotics, established by Charles S. Peirce, is characterised by its recognition of non‐linguistic signs and embedment in a communicative interaction; for this reason, it is especially well suited for a semiotic investigation of intersubjective processes. In this paper, the authors show how these intersubjective processes can be understood in semiotic terms within the transference‐countertransference setting. Based on a case vignette, the relationship between the ‘real object’ (e.g. an unconscious fantasy) and the sign (e.g. a particular facial expression) is fi rst demonstrated. In this mediation between sign and referent, an important role is played by the ‘immediate object’, by which Peirce understood the mental concept of a sign. However, a further component of the Peircian sign is responsible for the emergence of the countertransference, namely, the ‘interpretant’. The core of Peircian semiotics, namely the concept of an (infi nite) process of signifi cation, sheds light in semiotic terms on the dialectical movement between transference‐signs and countertransference‐signs, the interpretation and encounter between two subjects. The paper concludes with a discussion of both the interdisciplinary applicability of Peircian semiotics, for example in the context of the neurosciences, and the differences between the Peircian epistemological position and psychoanalytical conceptions of the objective cognition of mental processes.     

Figuration of the Real as an Intersubjective Process

In this paper, I make use of the term figuration, which relates to the process of giving shape to unconscious contents in the form of meaningful presentations. My interest is in how traumatic experience succeeds or fails to become psychically figured and thereby susceptible to elaboration and absorption through intersubjective process. I argue that the process of figuration always occurs in an actual or implied intersubjective context and involves, thereby, a central feature of an exchange between subject and Other. These concepts are discussed and applied to a case report of an analytic psychotherapy involving a traumatic dream and its sequellae.     

Subject in first person--subject in third person: subject, subjectivity, and intersubjectivity

In this article, the author traces the history of the concepts of subject, subjectivity, and intersubjectivity in different psychoanalytic theories in the last decades. She argues that the uniqueness of these concepts and their different implications were not emphasized enough. The author discusses the various implications and contexts of the concept of subject in psychoanalytic theory proper and to relate as to: (1). The need to distinguish between the concepts of subject and subjectivity; (2). The mutual interdependence of the subject and his subjectivity and the intersubjective domain (both in the development of the individual and in theoretical thought pertaining to it). Her point of departure is from the position of the subject as a free creature, the centrality of the experiencing individual, from his/her perspective—the subject in the first person. She tries to explain the paradox implicit in the experiential dimension, the place of the other as participant, as both negating and recognizing—the subject in the third person. She suggests the interdependency of the first-person experience of subjectivity on the intersubjective dimension.     

Between the Ability to Imagine and Actually Seeing: The Intersubjective in Reclamation

When working with severely damaged, neglected, and deprived patients, the analyst relies on the faith that the intersubjective analytic space can be the site of a live relationship. In this regard, the unique technique of “reclamation” might be used with patients in a moment of imminent danger or of a sense of psychic death and involves an active response to the sense of emergency in countertransference. Reclamation is based on the analyst/therapist's ability to conduct intersubjective dialogue between the various spaces of internalized object relations, and the author attempts to extend the possibility of its technical application by considering reclamation as intersubjective.     

Symbols and symbolization in clinical practice and in Elisabeth Marton's film My Name was Sabina Spielrein

If symbolization can be defined, in a general way, as the operation of substitution by which something can represent something else for someone, the Freudian discovery of the unconscious introduced the idea of a process of work whereby the subject is differentiated from the object. As a consequence, the vicissitudes of symbolization are related to the vicissitudes of the drive. The clinical case of a psychotic patient treated in individual psychoanalytic psychodrama shows the possibility of overcoming violence and destructivity thanks to the work of representation and symbolization of the denied and split psychic movements. Thanks to the third party function of the leader and of the analytic setting, the individual psychoanalytical psychodrama favours psychic change. Elisabeth Marton's film illustrates this issue in so far as the destructive passion between Sabina Spielrein and Jung was partly transformed into a creative work with Freud's role as a third party.