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From time to time a book appears in the field of philosophy that holds great relevance for contemporary psychoanalysis. One such book is Subjectivity and Selfhood by Dan Zahavi, professor of philosophy and
director of the Center for Subjectivity Research at the University of Copenhagen. In this book Zahavi provides valuable philosophical tools that promise to be of help in clearing up conceptual muddles about “the self” that pervade contemporary psychoanalytic discourse.
Zahavi's aim is to investigate the interrelationships among experience, self-awareness, and selfhood, in support of the claim that selfhood cannot be comprehended apart from a form of self-awareness intrinsic to the structure of subjectivity itself. In the course of his investigation he gives the reader a grand tour of the works of the major contributors to philosophical phenomenology—Brentano, Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Ricoeur—along with a smattering of contemporary philosophers of mind. Among the topics covered are the first-person perspective, structures of experience and prereflective self-awareness, intentionality and self-acquaintance, temporality and time-consciousness, embodiment and body-awareness, and empathy and intersubjectivity. Zahavi's elucidations of difficult philosophical works are exceptionally clear and accessible; indeed, portions of his book could serve as an excellent, reader-friendly introduction to philosophical phenomenology.
Of particular importance for contemporary psychoanalysis is Zahavi's clear delineation of three distinctive conceptions of self found in philosophical discourse:
The Kantian self. The self of Kantian philosophy is not directly experienced; it is the inferred locus of identity in the midst of changing experiences. Our changing experiences all have something in common: they all have the same subject, they are all lived through by one and the same self. The Kantian self remains one and the same through time. This selfsame subject, accordi