Two responses to Meissneer vs. Postmodernism

February 16, 1999. I am writing to clarify a misunderstanding in William Meissner's otherwise thoughtful and appreciative review of my chapter, “Psychoanalysis is Self-Centered,” in Soul on the Couch: Spirituality, Religion and Morality in Contemporary Psychoanalysis (JAPA 46/4). In this essay I argue that the fertile, authentic subjectivity that contemporary psychoanalysts of every stripe have so ably illuminated and facilitated eclipses a vital facet of self-experience, namely, non-self-centered subjectivity. Non-self-centered subjectivity refers to a state in which there is heightened attentiveness, focus, and clarity, attunement to the other as well as the self, non-self-preoccupied exercise of agency, a sense of unity with the world and timelessness, and non-self-annulling immersion in whatever one is doing in the present. In non-self-centered subjectivity we are open to the moment without a sense of time, unselfconscious but acutely aware, highly focused and engaged yet relaxed and without fear. The neglect of non-self-centered subjectivity in psychoanalysis leads, I argue, to an impoverished view of self, a narcissistic conception of relationships, and an incomplete account of morality. After accurately depicting the implications of my argument, Meissner enters this demurrer: “But one could well argue