Schwaber on Meissner and Psychic Reality

November 18, 2001. In W. W. Meissner's paper, “Psychic Reality in the Psychoanalytic Process” ( J. Amer. Psychoanal. Assn.  49/3)↗, he notes that there are objective observational data that one can gather, as in reading a text. Meissner states, “Our consensus regarding the reality of the words can be ruffled by my misreading—I might read “bias” for “basis” —but the distortion can be corrected by returning to the text and rereading it. That much is objective.… The text is objective and my reading can be double-checked so that my knowing it is objective” (pp. 856-857). Accordingly, I would like to return to the text of some of my published statements in apposition to Meissner's rendering of my views.

He writes: “Validation of the analyst's psychic reality has come under attack from theorists insisting on the primacy of the patient's psychic reality…, as though the one were inherently opposed to the other—if one was valid, the other could not be” (p. 861). He cites me as a proponent of this position, stating that I make “appeals for uncritical acceptance and validation of the patient's rendering” (p. 865), and attempt “to reduce or suspend the role of the analyst's own subjective experience” (p. 868). In disagreement with my presumed stance, he observes, “the analyst's psychic reality … can even be heuristically useful, or necessary, when a discrepancy arises between the patient's version and his own” (p. 861). Citing the conceptual question I had posed—“To whose point of view do we refer?”—he responds, “The answer for me is that neither view is disqualified and neither is privileged, but both are open to questioning and exploration. But to distinguish my approach from Schwaber's, I do not find it possible to disqualify my own experience and awareness in favor of the patient” (pp. 877-878).

To revisit the text in which I posited this question ( “From Whose Point of View?”  Psychoanal. Q., 1998↗), I spoke there of