Symmetry and Asymmetry in the Analytic Process: Reply to Commentaries

I would like to begin by thanking the anonymous readers of my article and the editors of JAPA for helping me improve it in the evaluation process, and the latter for asking me if I would allow colleagues to comment on it and for me to then respond. I also thank Donna Orange and Lewis Kirshner for their comments. I am honored that such well-known and respected authors have accepted the invitation of the JAPA editors. Since my essay is already long and demanding, I intend to respond to them as briefly as possible and only on the most relevant and controversial issues.

A careful reading of my paper would show that I do not use “weak” and “strong” as judgments of merit, but only descriptively, just as I might say “less or more inclusive” with respect to a factor or element X. There are situations in which a weak light is much better than a strong light and vice versa, for instance at the cinema or theater or restaurant, as well as, in analysis, if we think metaphorically of Enlightenment reason. It is no coincidence that one of the sources of inspiration for field theory was an Italian philosophical current called “weak thought” (Vattimo 1981; ), where the adjective weak is used positively to indicate a modern or postmodern sensibility. The central thesis is the crisis of a “strong” notion of the subject as the repository of knowledge in which there is correspondence between words and things, thus close to an absolute idea of truth. Hence, for example, the “post-metaphysical” idea of “unsaturated interpretation.”

By the way, the judgment on the strengths and weaknesses of the various models could not be derived from a single element of a metapsychological order. Instead it will be based on the conviction of the community of researchers as to whether or not a model is capable of producing new or more integrated perspectives in the field of observation, the theory