Better Identity Politics

Suchet's paper is an inspiring demonstration of the power of openness and vulnerability. It offers a clinically daring and theoretically far-reaching account of the transformation that can sometimes occur in the psychoanalytic relationship. My commentary focuses on two of the paper's major threads: the interplay of subjective experience, intersubjective space, and collective forces, and the ethical dimension of the psychoanalytic project. From the outset, the meeting between Ara and Suchet is not only a meeting of bodies and minds, but also a meeting of collective histories and politics. Suchet finds, and in her account powerfully demonstrates, that addressing her patient's trouble requires an exploration of how collective traumas and political narratives infuse the possibilities of intersubjective exchange and subjective meaning. In my commentary I trace and elaborate on the trajectory of this analytic process, contemplating the ways in which identities and identifications involve both familial and social attachments. I attempt to highlight Suchet's contribution to our understanding of how what happens, and is made meaningful, in the register of collective identification and experience, forms the very substance of subjective and intersubjective life, and should be therefore formulated as an intrinsic aspect of the analytic endeavour. Turning to Suchet's engagement with the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas, I consider her drive to reach beyond the traditional boundaries of psychoanalytic discourse. Following the same drive, I add some ideas developed by Theodor Adorno, as means of illustrating the trouble and the potential for reconciliation inherent in the experience and politics of identity.     

The Particularities of Form: Reply to Commentary

In this brief reply to Bollas's commentary on our paper about his work, the cycles of intersubjective dialogue endlessly sustaining should be apparent. We begin with an example of the form—content distinction and attempt to use it as a springboard for further disentangling some of the nuances of Bollas's intersubjective theorizing. Bollas's emphasis on form over content as a means of conceptualizing the analyst's contribution to the analytic process is indeed compelling. We all know from both sides of the couch the profoundly different meanings and messages that an analyst's mien invites: whether she's abrupt, verbose, meditative, tranquil. Yes, the medium is the message, and, thus, whether the analyst conveys a message through the effects of form that Bollas points out, such as “We have all the time you need for the nuances of unconscious figuring” versus “This is hot—we hafta figure it out now” surely does have an effect on the psychic material produced in the analytic process. We go on to add to Bollas's discussion of form by considering the particularities of form and how these too affect the analytic process.     

Intersubjectivity Theory and the Dilemma of Intersubjective Motivation

This paper explores the topic of intersubjective motivation, understood as the process of being motivated by the subjectivity of other subjects. The author outlines a general conception of intersubjective motivation, arguing for the importance of that conception in advancing the relational project within psychoanalysis. The author reviews a handful of relational and intersubjective approaches, identifying and evaluating strategies that might be employed to explain the phenomenon of intersubjective motivation. Using Jessica Benjamin's theory of intersubjectivity as a starting point, the author proposes an original model of the intrapsychic conditions for intersubjective motivation identified as the intersubjective relational configuration. The clinical implications of these ideas are traced out, and an argument is made for the development of a comprehensive psychoanalytic theory of motivation, one that includes intrapsychic as well as intersubjective elements.     

The Achilles Heel of Psychoanalysis: Meditations on Motivation: Commentary on Paper by Robert P. Drozek

In discussing Robert P. Drozek's “Intersubjectivity Theory and the Dilemma of Intersubjective Motivation,” I consider the challenges inherent to general theories of motivation in contemporary psychoanalysis, challenges that are further complicated by our multiple theories of intersubjectivity. While I agree with Drozek that individuals can be motivated by aspects of others' subjective experience I would not raise this phenomenon to a general theory of motivation. I explain why I feel that motivation is a fraught topic in contemporary psychoanalysis, and I suggest reasons that relational authors have often addressed this topic only obliquely. I also take issue with Drozek's claim that, to date, psychoanalysis has no motivational theory that addresses both the intrapsychic and the intersubjective realms. In reviewing the ideas of several authors whose theories Drozek rejects because he believes their work reduces motivation to the intrapsychic, I find that these authors have addressed the intersubjective and intrapsychic aspects of motivation far more adequately and complexly than Drozek has recognized. Thus while I admire the energy and logic—even at times the eloquence—with which Drozek presents his ideas, I question whether psychoanalysis needs a new motivational theory at this point in time.     

Sitting With Eros and Psyche on a Buddhist Psychoanalyst's Cushion

This paper's psychoanalytic view of love rests on the assumption that adult erotic life has its origins in the early mother/baby sensual/relational matrix. Under optimal conditions, erotic sensuality is enlivened by developing capacity for empathy so that passionate pleasure involves mutuality and intersubjective attunement compatible with Buddhist views of interbeing and compassion.     

Ghostbusting Transgenerational Processes

Transgenerational processes contribute to organizing and disorganizing attachment. The past (in all its forms and potentialities) lives on in the present, influencing the affective field of the parent–child intersubjective matrix. In a child's construction of self, he or she may run up against the confounding presence of ghosts: the dissociated, and thereby unreflected upon past of their parents. This implicitly felt, yet explicitly unknown transmission interferes in the processing of emergent experience and impedes the child's development.

Attachment theory, informed by psychoanalysis, and nonlinear dynamic systems theory, is the main theoretical underpinning of this paper's examination of the mechanisms involved in the transfer of dissociated dynamics from parent to child. The child's symptoms grow out of an incoherent affective field that defies representational mapping into a flexible usable theory of mind. Through play a child therapist finds openings to enter the attachment system, reflecting on how a child's experience is being felt, yet unthought about by both child and parents. A parent's recognition process, thereby making what was implicitly felt explicit and consequently more coherent, supports the child in his or her efforts to reorganize aspects of the attachment relationship. Both clinical experience and quotations from literary works are woven into this paper in an attempt to convey the texture, emotional depth, and universality of the subject under discussion.     

Freudian Intersubjectivity: Commentary on Paper by Julie Gerhardt and Annie Sweetnam

In response to Gerhardt and Sweetnam's interesting critique of aspects of my work, I focus on what we may think of as the intersubjective within the Freudian frame of reference, which in my view is the particular contribution of psychoanalysis to the problematic of the intersubjective.     

From Survival to Creative Destiny: The Psychoanalytic Journey of Nina Farhi

Initially, this paper briefly introduces the work of my colleague, Nina Farhi, who was a highly respected psychoanalytic psychotherapist in London and who sadly died last year. After her death, I was invited to discuss both her paper, “The Hands of the Living God,” and the three commentaries by North American analysts, all published in this issue. As part of my commentary, I provide an appreciative yet critical discussion of the way Farhi uses the term “intersubjectivity.” I argue that there is a need for paternal function or a third position to be found in the mind of the analyst in the later phases of work with deeply disturbed patients. I also contribute to the hypothetical debate about whether or not experiences in the womb can be subject to analytic work, using the Lacanian concept of the “Real” and Piontelli's work on fetal and child observation. After this, I explore some of the ways Lacan revised drive theory and discuss these in relation to psychic devolution in later life, essential aloneness and creative human destiny. Finally, I look at how Farhi's paper's posthumous publication may have affected the commentary.     

A psychoanalytical phenomenology of perversion1

After stating that the current tasks of psychoanalytic research should fundamentally include the exploration of the analyst's mental processes in sessions with the patient, the author describes the analytical relation as one having an intersubjective nature. Seen from the outside, the analytical relation evidences two poles: a symmetric structural pole where both analyst and patient share a single world and a single approach to reality, and a functional asymmetric pole that defines the assignment of the respective roles. In the analysis of a perverse patient, the symmetry‐asymmetry polarities acquire some very particular characteristics. Seen from the perspective of the analyst's subjectivity, perversion appears in the analyst's mind as a surreptitious and unexpected transgression of the basic agreement that facilitates and structures intersubjective encounters. It may go as far as altering the Aristotelian rules of logic. When coming into contact with the psychic reality of a perverse patient, what happens in the analyst's mind is that a world takes shape. This world is misleadingly coloured by an erotisation that sooner or later will acquire some characteristics of violence. The perverse nucleus, as a false reality, remains dangling in mid‐air as an experience that is inaccessible to the analyst's empathy. The only way the analyst can reach it is from the ‘periphery’ of the patient's psychic reality, by trying in an indirect way to lead him back to his intersubjective roots. At this point, the author's intention is to explain this intersubjective phenomenon in terms of metapsychological and empirical research‐based theories. Finally, some ideas on the psychogenesis of perversion are set forth.     

Freedom and the Cogito

Drawing on Descartes' account of générosité, a reinterpretation of the Cogito is offered, emphasizing the role of the will. The paper's first part focuses on Cartesian ethics. It is argued that Descartes can be viewed as a Stoical thinker rather than a Baconian one. That is, he holds that theoretical contemplation is itself the primary ground of human happiness and tranquility of mind – experienced as the feeling of générosité. The paper's second part draws on the first in accounting for the relation between radical doubt and certainty. By engaging with doubt, it is argued, the meditator comes to experience générosité, assert freedom. This experience is not, then, as argued by some, merely the Cogito's ethical counterpart. It is rather the Cogito's foundation. The meditator's assertion sum follows from – insofar as freedom is, as the definition of générosité asserts, ‘the only thing truly belonging to us', it consists in – the assertion of freedom.     

How Resilient Are Our Attempts to Explore the Mind of Another? Commentary on Dr. Karlen Lyons-Ruth's Article

This article discusses whether attachment experiences may shape the quality and consistency of individuals' attempts to explore the minds of significant others, a process Dr. Lyons-Ruth refers to as intersubjectivity. Specific commentary focuses on whether individuals with an insecure or disorganized attachment organization continue to engage in intersubjective processes over the lifespan. To help illuminate these questions, the work of the University College London group on reflective functioning is discussed and directions for future research are suggested.     

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.     

Crash: What We Do When We Cannot Touch: Commentary on Paper by Meira Likierman

This commentary aims to show the congruence and difference between Likierman's position on recognizing otherness and working with enactment and her relational, intersubjective position. Differences in my reading of the case include stressing the repetition of early attachment trauma, the level of implicit procedural relating, and the patient's contribution to the shared third of rupture and repair. I try to show that enactments arise not merely because the patient is able to pull the patient into forbidden behavior but because the dissociated parts of the patient pull the analyst into dissociation even when the analyst is acting “properly.” The rupture or collision—the “crash”—that the patient helps to formulate represents an opportunity to see the life-giving element in what we, analysts along with patients, inevitably also experience as frightening and even life-threatening.     

Ferenczi and Winnicott: Why We Need Their Radical Edge: Commentary on Paper by Michael Parsons

Parsons's paper, “An Independent Theory of Clinical Technique,” is discussed. Agreement is expressed with many of the theoretical points made by Parsons, and the creative and freeing historical role of the British Independent tradition (recently attacked by Kleinian authors such as Segal) is praised. However, the author sees some of the clinical examples in the paper as expressing a traditionalist conception of psychoanalytic practice, with a strong one-sided emphasis on the analyst as a knowledgeable expert offering deep interpretations. Parsons does not question the nature of the actual intersubjective relationship in each dyad, with its fluctuations and its subtle nuances, which can go far beyond the proclaimed roles of the two partners, at times even reversing them. More radical points of view can be found in the work of Ferenczi and Winnicott, two authors who are significant both for Parsons and for the author; for example, Ferenczi's emphasis on the patient's capacity to interpret the analyst's countertransference, and the experiments with the setting both made in their search for an adaptation to the unique ‘analysand's needs. In conclusion, the paper calls for continued departure from standard techniques of any kind, critically deconstructing all traditional assumptions regarding the analytic process.     

Affective Experiences and Honesty in the Interaction: Discussion of Holly Levenkron's Paper

Anchoring her views in the work of Benjamin and other American relational authors, Levenkron asserts that intersubjective relatedness in which there is recognition of separate realities is essentially the only form of relatedness. Framing growth as coming about through the recognition of another's subjectivity provides a basis for “confrontation” and for a more direct injection of the analyst's subjectivity into the analytic encounter. More specifically, it fosters the expression of the analyst's subjectivity from what this author calls the “other-centered” and “self” perspectives.

In contrast, the recognition of selfobject and caretaking relatedness positions the analyst to express directly aspects of the analyst's subjectivity pertaining to mirroring, idealizing, and twinship selfobject needs. Kohut and classical self psychologists have delineated selfobject needs and the selfobject dimension of relatedness and transference and have emphasized the consistent use of the empathic listening/experiencing perspective. American relational theorists have delineated intersubjective relatedness and the usefulness of the other-centered listening/experiencing perspective. This author focuses on an integrative theory including three forms of relatedness and different listening/experiencing perspectives. Different listening/experiencing perspectives and forms of relatedness fundamentally influence analysts' affective experiences within the analytic encounter as exemplified in Levenkron's case.     

Crossing Boundaries: Commentary on Paper by Sarah Hill

This commentary focuses on two aspects of Hill's presentation. First, it addresses the critical role of repetition compulsion in carrying into analytic enactments the patient's early, unsymbolized traumas. This discussion addresses, furthermore, Hill's reference to her early, preverbal, experience with an African nanny, as this resonated with some of the author's personal experiences. It is suggested that, particularly in American culture, the identities of white children who experience extended care by black nannies must be regarded as multiply determined, race being a critical determinant. How this aspect of white identity is negotiated in a culture bounded by established racial dichotomies is regarded as critical to analytic inquiry, regardless of the racial makeup of the analytic dyad.     

Fragmented Images: How Can the Eye See Itself? A Relational and Intersubjective Reformulation of Cross-Cultural Therapy with Cecilia

This article discusses why it is crucial in the cross-cultural clinical encounter to practice from both Jessica Benjamin's intersubjective frame as well as relational theory when the therapist is from the dominant White culture and the client is African American. Intersubjective and relational theories are utilized to illustrate how it is in this clinical situation, however, that some therapists may find themselves avoiding the use of a more relational practice. A case illustration is presented from the lens of Winnicott's theory of object relations to convey the dynamic complexities that may impede a therapist from practicing out of these (more relational) frames and then the case is reconceptualized from both a relational and intersubjective perspective.     

Being in one's chosen job determines pre‐training attitudes and training outcomes

The present study introduces a new important variable into a model of training motivation, namely that of being in one's chosen job. Evidence exists that having some control and choice over aspects of training have positive effects on training motivation. We propose that being in one's chosen job will also have such an effect, as it provides trainees with greater autonomy regarding their career progression (e.g., Gagné & Deci, 2005 ) and aligns their training activity closely with their personal goals (e.g., Locke & Latham, 2002 ). Pre‐ and post‐training surveys were completed by 232 instructors who were themselves on a military training course. Results confirmed the positive effects of being in one's chosen job on the pre‐training attitudes of self‐efficacy and training motivation with further direct effects on motivation to transfer, and indirect effects on knowledge acquisition and post‐training self‐efficacy. Findings have both theoretical and practical ramifications. Being in one's chosen job should be incorporated into models of training motivation and, whenever possible, employees being re‐deployed should be granted their job preference because this is associated with important positive effects on pre‐training attitudes and motivation to transfer new skills to the work environment.