Once upon a time a great king appeared in the Land of Psychoanalysis. His name was Kohut. He had a beautiful new idea called Self Psychology, which he hoped would make Psychoanalysis a better land in which to live and work. Sadly, he became ill and died while still quite young, and it was left to his many knights throughout the land to help his beautiful new idea grow and flourish.

But all was not well in the Land of Psychoanalysis. The priests of Psychoanalysis did not like Kohut’s new idea. They became angry and tried to punish and banish the Knights of Self Psychology. At one gathering in the village of Toronto in the year 1984, a priest named Curtis [President of APsaA] said to the knights: “I don’t like your new idea. You are not true Psychoanalysts!” This made the Knights of Self Psychology very upset.

Then a strange thing happened. One of the knights who had done much to help Kohut’s new idea grow and flourish let it be known that he, too, had had a new idea. His name was Stolorow and his new idea was called intersubjectivity. Once again the priests became angry, not only the old priests of Psychoanalysis but the new priests of Self Psychology. One priest, named X [a close disciple of Kohut], sent a letter to all the Knights of Self Psychology, in which he told Stolorow: “I don’t like your new idea. You are not a true Self Psychologist!”

And so, my young psychoanalysts, beware. An evil demon has lived in the Land of Psychoanalysis since the time of its first king, Freud. It is the demon of orthodoxy. It takes possession of good knights like X and turns them into priests like Curtis— priests who want to punish and banish knights who have new ideas.

Sleep well, young psychoanalysts, and dream. Dream of a better Land of Psychoanalysis. A land with no demon and no priests. A land where knights can have new ideas, talk, and be friends.

Dream…

Intersubjective Self Psychology: A Bewitching Oxymoron

Robert D. Stolorow

Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of our language.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein, 1953, section 109

Oxymoronic hybrids are aimed at closing the gap separating incompatible universes of discourse. Oxymorons have been appearing in the contemporary psychoanalytic literature, for example, that paste together a post-Cartesian perspective with characteristics of the Cartesian isolated mind. A good illustration of this trend is an edited volume, Intersubjective Self Psychology, recently reviewed by Riker (2020) in the Psychoanalytic Review. What Riker does not seem to notice or mention is that the title of this book manifests a rather glaring oxymoron. The word intersubjective here refers to the phenomenological-contextual perspective that Atwood and I (Stolorow & Atwood, 2018) have developed over the past half-century in an effort to rethink psychoanalysis as a form of phenomenological inquiry. “Self,” from this perspective, can refer only to an experience or sense of selfhood constituted in a particular relational context, not to a preformed entity.

The theoretical language of Kohut’s self psychology reifies the experiencing of selfhood and transforms it into a metaphysical entity with thing-like properties. This theoretical self, like other metaphysical entities, is ontologically (in its being or intelligibility) decontextualized. It is thus a descendent of Descartes’s isolated mind. The oxymoronic title Intersubjective Self Psychology reflects an effort to cover up the incommensurability of these two meanings—self as a dimension of experiencing and self as a metaphysical entity.

References

Riker, J. (2020). Review of Intersubjective Self Psychology. Psychoanalytic Review, 107. 197-203.
Stolorow, R. D. & Atwood, G. E. (2018). The Power of Phenomenology: Psychoanalytic and Philosophical Perspectives. London & New York: Routledge.
Wittgenstein, L. (1953). Philosophical Investigations. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.

We welcome your responses to Bob Stolorow’s article. Send them to Doris Brothers at eForum@IAPSP.org and they will be posted.