Commentary on Civitarese

Intersubjectivity and Analytic Field Theory

In his paper, Civitarese presents in some detail the development of Husserl’s thought. In his early work, Husserl struggled to make sense of the notion of empathy as a way of connecting the subject with others around him. Most commentators would agree that this project was not successful. Many later theorists, in both psychology and philosophy, confronted the same problem (of other minds) and, it might be said, remain stuck in a tautological and tendentious use of empathy as a core notion. Cognitive neuroscience still debates how to solve the apparent problem of recognizing that we are surrounded by others with minds like our own. This difficulty of escaping the Cartesian dilemma of the isolated subject has been extensively challenged by phenomenologists, notably by Heidegger and by Husserl in his later work, recognizing that the subject begins life immersed in an intersubjective world. Civitarese masterfully unravels and explains Husserl’s new approach, largely found in unpublished notes and manuscripts, in which he proposed that subjectivity and intersubjectivity originate together in a dialectical, prereflexive, transcendental unity. Obviously, this genre of formulation remains both extremely abstract and almost impossible to imagine in terms of infantile or neonatal life. As Civitarese aptly states, “for Husserl, intersubjectivity is not a concept descriptive of a directly observable reality, but a transcendental concept . . . and not a suitable term to account for the child observed in the rich capacity for interaction it already possesses at birth” (p. 860).

Civitarese poses key questions that a reader like me might raise. Is “all this arguing only a kind of (useless?) regression toward infinity or a tautological exercise? . . . What do we as clinicians gain from thinking of subjectivity and intersubjectivity if we bring them back to pre-subjectivity and pre-intersubjectivity, respectively?” (pp. 861–862). A brief digression about Husserl’s epistemology may be relevant here. Diverse commentators interpret Husserl as pursuing the possibility of a logical, “scientific” method of investigation (of consciousness) to gain accurate understanding of the phenomenology of experience. Using methods different from those employed by Kant (whose thinking was dominant during Husserl’s studies), but with the similar goal of understanding how reality can be accurately perceived, Husserl sought to get to the bottom of things, starting from a phenomenological return to “the things themselves.” I am not qualified to enter the intradisciplinary disputes about how his thinking may have changed in that respect, but most agree that the goal of his final period was to establish the foundations for a theory of transcendental intersubjectivity. Civitarese appears somewhat skeptical of this effort. “And yet,” he concludes, “something is achieved” toward the development of intersubjective theory. Using Husserl’s conclusions, he adds, leads to the “tentative redefinition of intersubjectivity as a concept thinkable only in dialectical terms: in the original ego or pre-ego (Ur-Ich) lies the non-ego (Nicht-Ich), and vice versa. . . . The transcendental intersubjectivity lies precisely in this ‘interweaving’ or ‘reversibility’ of the ego and o/Other . . . one of the Bionian versions of O, an ‘infinity’ of primitive egos” (p. 863).

I feel that Civitarese hedges a bit. His knowledgeable analysis of Husserl’s late work provides the theoretical foundation that he needs to justify a redefinition of psychoanalytic intersubjectivity based on field theory. He goes on to make an impressive case that field theory supplies a way (the only way?) to apply Husserl’s groundbreaking conceptions to psychoanalysis. This conclusion then further opens the path to endorsing Bionian theory as providing content for the dialectical analytic field. If this were not the implicit thesis of Civitarese’s paper, we would be left only with post-Bionian field theory as yet another form of intersubjectivity, on a continuum with all the other clinical models to which he refers. Husserl’s transcendental philosophy would then offer an alternative way to speculate about the origins of intersubjectivity, forced to fight for its rightful place among other hypotheses. This latter portrayal seems to me an accurate way to present our current situation in psychoanalysis (and contemporary philosophy). That is, we are undergoing a paradigm shift in our way of understanding self, subject, and mind from a perspective involving an intertwining and sharing of conscious and unconscious processes between subjects. How best to understand the relationship between subjectivity and intersubjectivity has become a major focus of our professional conversations. Many analysts do not yet accept this paradigm change, and most probably continue to use the older intrapsychic concepts of their preferred analytic theories, as the paper suggests.

I said that Civitarese hedges his bets because he may himself be dialectically torn between endorsing a substantive theory of intersubjective truth and deploying a powerful and interesting metaphor for the kinds of phenomena that most analysts would agree are intersubjective (at least in part). To make my point more explicit, I expect that Civitarese knows that Husserl’s phenomenological justification for transcendental intersubjectivity would be countered by an array of modern critics including Heidegger, Dewey, Wittgenstein, Derrida, and Rorty, all of whom reject the possibility of constructing a viable justification for knowledge. They argue that experience must always be interpreted, while criteria for accurate interpretation are lacking. In this respect, Husserl and Bion stand in the same relation to truth or knowledge as Freud, Klein, Lacan, Winnicott, and Kohut. If only psychoanalysts would fully accept this conclusion instead of continuing to defend the validity of their preferred theories, our discipline might be more widely appreciated. Truth in psychoanalysis belongs to the state of our current professional dialogues, where we try out our different versions of what the work is all about. We don’t know the comparative advantages of adapting different theories to practice or how to apply intersubjectivity to specific analysands, and probably these questions will never be fully sorted out. Civitarese’s proposals belong in this conversation, but need to be relativized and interrogated like all the others.

Citing Merleau-Ponty after the scholarly presentation of Husserl adds another important perspective that belongs in any serious discussion of intersubjectivity. Civitarese correctly observes that Merleau-Ponty, like Sartre, was greatly influenced by his reading of Husserl. Yet, of course, he differed in his greater familiarity with psychoanalysis, as well as his interest in infant research, still in its beginnings, and neurology, so that his phenomenological approach deserves consideration independently. Certainly Merleau-Ponty’s attempt to move beyond a subject-object model toward an integration of self with world through his difficult conception of the “flesh” remains influential for contemporary phenomenologists. In some ways, it even seems more readily translatable into the clinical techniques described in the paper, as he pushes us to renounce familiar ways of differentiating ourselves and our Cartesian consciousness of self from our experience and perception of the other. I expect that this shift in the analyst’s position, which is what Civitarese advocates, will continue to permeate the analytic “mainstream,” as the interplay between separate subjectivities and their mutual permeability gains broader acceptance. How far this metaphorical way of conceiving of psychoanalytic intersubjectivity should extend will be debated for many years.

The Concept of Intersubjectivity

Here I am in accord with much of Civitarese’s exposition. I perceive a growing convergence of schools in our discipline that see subjectivity and intersubjectivity as inextricably entwined and co-constituted, both in adult functioning and in early development. At this point in the history of psychoanalysis we need both concepts to talk about what we see happening in our work. Authors of diverse orientation speculate on the developmental emergence of a differentiated self and other in tandem from a matrix of shared affective experience, crystallizing with the internalization of language, as Civitarese outlines. This picture of human development has gradually become our shared language, despite persisting disagreement from adherents of classical Freudian metapsychology. I also share Civitarese’s criticism of persistent efforts to explain behavior in terms of objectified mental mechanisms. Anyone familiar with case presentations at meetings or in our institutes will recognize this tendency, sometimes supported by adherence to a particular theory. We need to be clear in our teaching that all of the concepts of the mind and mental functions we have inherited from the various psychoanalytic vocabularies can best be used as metaphorical descriptions, not taken as actual objects. They are ways of speaking about possible explanations for human behavior that can orient our thinking for good or ill. In addition, as Civitarese reminds us, we need to pay attention to the private theories that structure our understanding of others.

In terms of the clinical continuum of forms of intersubjectivity, Civitarese correctly observes that some models emphasize the discrete, separate existence of interacting subjects and their influence on one another, while others endorse some version of a shared unconscious or third state. Although I have the impression that analysts tend to be more flexible and inclusive in their work than the interesting examples he proposes demonstrate, I accept his point about the difference between his theoretical model, derived from Husserl, and others that do not begin with a theory of a unitary pre-subjective state, dialectically constituted. I do not, however, believe that all the theoretical elaboration about psychic origins is necessary to understand the techniques or positions Civitarese advocates or to be persuaded to try them out in practice. Innovative clinicians create new ideas and methods, just like thinkers in other branches of the humanities. But does the continuum of forms of intersubjectivity, already addressed by Beebe et al. (2005), usefully describe the complex reality of psychoanalytic practice?

I am confident that Civitarese would concur that intersubjectivity, like subjectivity, is not a thing or entity that can be isolated and studied, but an ensemble of abstract concepts relying on a fund of other terms that circulate in the discourses of contemporary psychoanalysis and the humanities. Clearly analysts have disagreements about which versions are most useful for their work. Some lean toward neuroscience to find evidence for their conceptions, while others are more philosophically inclined. I find this a fruitful, if often frustrating situation. Although we cannot be sure to what extent practitioners actually apply their theories, I expect that only a minority of analysts practice the way Civitarese proposes. Studies like Ruden and Bronstein’s work on the comparative understanding of transference (2015) suggest that analysts have become more aware of their decisive influence on what happens in the treatment relationship, but current practice, I suspect, applies a mixture of concepts near the middle or lower end of the continuum. We can be grateful to Civitarese for offering an example of his own application of the theory. He and his colleagues in the Pavia group have been generous in sharing reports of their analytic methods in workshops and papers. This work, from my limited observation, remains controversial. Because it sounds so different from “normal” psychoanalytic case reports, which it directly challenges, the field theory cum Bionian model, as he interprets it, evokes understandable defensiveness and resistance. This reaction to an unfamiliar way of thinking is always suspect, of course, as Kuhn taught. Eventually, I believe, it will itself become “normalized” as a common way to talk about practice, although what will represent our next dominant psychoanalytic paradigm cannot be predicted.

Nonetheless, I do share some of the criticisms of his approach to intersubjectivity that Civitarese details and sets out to refute in his paper. This inclusion, again, was a helpful and open way to deal with important issues. My reservations relate to both theory and practice. My position with regard to psychoanalytic theory for some time has been that it has become a major obstacle to progress in the field. As I noted above, psychoanalytic theories have a way of being applied too literally as ways to identify events occurring in a session. When used in this way, terms like enactment or projective identification can simply freeze what is being thought about in an objectifying way. Rather than simply staying in contact with the affective and verbal context, the analyst has recourse to an idea that seems to explain what is happening. Although I don’t believe that Civitarese himself is susceptible to this criticism, the eager application of Bionian formulae seems to me as prevalent as analogously literal uses of Kleinian or Lacanian concepts. Of course, his writings are rather theory-laden, as we see in the present paper, and could be misunderstood as telling us what is really going on intersubjectively in a session. Analysts of diverse schools use their awareness of changes in content or tone to construct their interpretations of what is transpiring, for example, whether coming from the countertransference or a shared fantasy or the tip of an emerging memory. Awareness of intense feelings or experiences at moments in an hour brings important information but is not a touchstone for accurate understanding.

In terms of the fundamental theoretical model, Civitarese is far from alone in pursuing speculative ideas about origins or shared psychic space. The Husserlian theory of a pre-originary, undifferentiated state and its later manifestations has counterparts in other authors, Kristeva, for instance, or de M’Uzan. Although I share Civitarese’s skepticism about unknown pre-subjective states, perhaps we should not be too quick to reject the untestable, unknowable, “ineffable” models they have advanced. The temptation to speculate about origins seems ineradicable, and perhaps something useful for research or for our changing conception of being human will eventually come of it. I don’t believe, however, that we need Husserl’s late writings to apply field theory as Civitarese would have it. Other, less philosophically adventurous hypotheses about an underlying mixture of intersubjective states can encourage the same kind of reverie, play, and dedifferentiation that his example illustrates.

His criticisms of technique may be more relevant. I accept Civitarese’s point that personal history, reality, and trauma are not excluded from his thinking about his patients, even though his focus seems primarily on the present. The present, as Scarfone (2014) has written, represents a symbolic actualization of the past, if always in a new way. Whether others influenced by Bion’s aphorism about memory and desire maintain the same degree of openness to multiple levels will have to be sorted out over time in our professional conversations and supervisions. His famous dictum may not be worth all the debate around its meaning or even whether it can be possible. Kernberg’s criticism blames the theory of the analytic field for neglecting external reality and contributing to “an unrealistic, fantastic atmosphere in the sessions” so that the function of the analyst to help the patient think about himself, “rather than indulge in fantasies about his or her unconscious reality, may suffer” (p. 882). Although this critique could describe a knee-jerk reaction to some of the field theory vignettes, it goes hand in hand with doubts about how interesting notions like the shared dream or hallucinosis can be applied without intrusion of personally invested ideas into the interaction. I appreciate the frank admission and agree that “as a rule there has to be a moment in which the analyst uses her theories or ‘group of transformations’” (p. 886). Yet choosing this moment opens the door to analyst-centered ideas and affects. While all analytic schools are vulnerable to this problem (of choices made unconsciously), the freedom apparently accorded these interventions by the Pavia school seems qualitatively and quantitatively greater. When does the pursuit of transcendental intersubjectivity become a rationale for subjectivity tout court?

A Personal Perspective

In this section I will describe my experience in applying intersubjectivity to psychoanalytic practice. Decades ago, I was attracted to Lacan’s early seminars, in which he argued that psychoanalysis must be intersubjective, involving two subjects, rather than be the analysis of an object. He helped me see that attempting to know what may be going on in the mind of another is fraught with difficulty, as it necessarily imposes preexisting assumptions and beliefs, which he considered imaginary constructions. This insight helped me let go of the orthodox version of psychoanalytic theory in which my generation was trained. Instead, Lacan emphasized close attention to the words spoken, encouraging their further elaboration. In this listening, he placed the desire of the analysand in the central role, as it represents what is most true to the subject (less alienated and imaginary). His Hegelian aphorism, “man’s desire is the desire of the other,” captured the notion of an intersubjective mixing. We want both to become the other’s desire and also to make theirs our own desire. Rather than enclosing an isolated entity, the subject’s boundaries are unstable and porous. Lacan’s formula “the unconscious is the voice of the Other” implied that something transpersonal inhabits us. The speech of the analysand is polyphonic, an ensemble of many voices conveying the important messages woven into his subjective position.

The French analyst René Kaës (2002), influenced by Lacan and Bion, studied the presence of polyphony in dreams and the circulation of thoughts in groups. His integration of theory with research helped show me how individual psyches can mutually participate in each other’s internal world (Kirshner 2006). From a much different starting point, analysts of the interpersonal school, like Levinson and Wolstein in New York, taught that understanding does not depend on searching inside a patient’s mind but derives from interactions in the present. Benjamin and Aron further developed these insights, and infant researchers like Trevarthen, Tronick, and Stern presented a developmental perspective on intersubjectivity. From within the self psychology school, Stolorow and colleagues brought a Heideggerian sensibility to a similar revision of psychoanalytic technique. These major steps toward the intersubjective turn in theory and practice are important to my current thinking.

While Lacan explicitly (and sometimes unethically) encouraged a blurring of different patient discourses in his office, presumably to break down the illusions of self or ego and (like Civitarese) to open access to greater unconscious expression, he disparaged the attention to countertransference that was emerging during this period. Because he contended that the symbolic transference (not the familiar Freudian transference to childhood figures) was asymmetric and unconscious, he argued against an intersubjective dimension in practice. With this step came a repudiation of humanistic concerns, at least as an intention of the analyst, much as Civitarese suggests in his paper. Perhaps this position represents another connection between Bion and Lacan, who both aimed at greater symbolization of unconscious elements that they believed were excluded by relational concepts. Likewise, the earlier emphasis on recognition, once considered a goal of analytic practice by Lacanians, was neglected as another impossible undertaking. Despite some fruitful later proposals, I found that this impersonal turn in Lacan’s work took psychoanalysis in a wrong direction, and I have some concern about analogous tendencies in the field theory model.

Civitarese’s paper seems ambiguous about “the postulate of mutual recognition,” but, unlike Lacan, he does restore affect to a central place in practice. He indicates acceptance of recognition if it translates “into innovative clinical practice,” rather than a “naive” application of the Hegelian idea (pp. 874–875). Many authors, including, notably, Modell and Benjamin, have endorsed the importance of the concept of recognition. Debates about what recognition means in practice, apart from an opposition to impersonality and indifference, also enliven relational discourse. Following Ricoeur, I advanced it as an ethical stance, a position to take toward an analysand, which derives from the irreducible singularity of the subject. While I share Civitarese’s dialectical perspective on identity and difference and agree with his opposition to any reification of the subject, I resist encouragement of analysts to abandon the humanistic posture on which our discipline ultimately depends. Perhaps his reference to Derrida’s term différance in this context conveys a similar interpretation.

Both Bion and Lacan sought to break out of a formalized and rigid technique in favor of greater spontaneity and an opening to unconscious elements. I understand this opening to mean an expanded capacity for thinking and feeling. Civitarese presents the Bionian view of the unconscious as “the unconscious capacity of human beings to immediately enter into resonance with each other so as to share the same ‘mental state’ starting from their reciprocal ‘valency’” (p. 877). As he notes, analysts hold many ideas about the unconscious, and, even in Lacan, different versions were present. I am in accord, however, with Lacan’s later rejection of a substantive unconscious—“the unconscious”—and view this common term as misleading and often anthropomorphic. While I concur that persons have capacities to enter into resonance and share some common elements as Kaës has described, I am less certain about “a shared psychoanalytic function” or a “dyadic personality,” as Civitarese writes (p. 886). It does not necessarily follow from the Husserlian notion of an undifferentiated protomental state that differentiated subjects, which no one denies, have a “a common or indistinct layer” (p. 886). The term “layer” itself suggests a philosophically questionable model of a spatially organized mind, undifferentiated at a deep level. Perhaps that is an interpretation that separates the Pavia group’s conception from others.

Although expansion of consciousness can be a product of the traditional analysis of resistances and object relations, I do agree with Civitarese that growth arises mainly from the intersubjective context of analysis. Tronick (1998) proposed the useful term “dyadic expansion of consciousness” from the perspective of infant research. In the clinical situation, a new content and an ability to speak in new ways often emerge as a product of the dual interaction, whose origins may not be discernible. Varied versions of “the analytic third” attempt to address this situation, where the source of an affect or an incipient action cannot be clearly identified. The observation that an affect, an intention, or a voice can appear in the room without being readily attributable to either participant seems to me correct. Something grows out of the interaction and the jointly used words and affects circulating in the dialogue. I have had experiences like those Civitarese describes where a change followed a patient’s report of a dream or fantasy that felt oddly mutual. Through these transpersonal moments, I have gradually become more comfortable with the unfamiliar discourse of post-Bionian theory and its intersubjective focus. I try to be alert to such occasions and, when the current context seems right, to participate in them. Sometimes my playful or dramatic interventions have led to interesting reactions, not only from the stimulus of surprise, but also by seeming to tap into unfamiliar feelings and ideas. Of course, it is always difficult to exclude suggestion from this process. As these comments indicate, my attempts to apply intersubjectivity in ways similar to the Pavia group have not become a routine part of my work, yet they have made me appreciate how their techniques deserve a place in our thinking about the nature of psychoanalytic process. How much, in what form, and under what constraints these theoretical and technical innovations will penetrate our teaching and practice remains to be decided by our ongoing conversation. I am convinced that the intersubjective turn has much further to expand, although paradigm change moves slowly and creates discomfort. Civitarese’s paper is an important contribution to this process, and reading it has helped expand my own consciousness of intersubjectivity.