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Donald Carveth has written a detailed and, at times, blistering critique of self psychology and intersubjectivity theory, in which he touches cursorily on what he values in these frameworks and concentrates primarily on what he rejects. In Part 1 (1994) of his critique, he contrasts his own practice of dialectical thinking, which he regards as “a mark of mature mental functioning” (p. 155), with the intellectually inferior monistic and dualistic modes of thought, which he believes are characteristic of self psychology and intersubjectivity theory. In Part 2 (1995), he targets the epistemological stance of self psychology and, especially, of intersubjectivity theory. We offer the following responses, in turn, to each of these two parts
Notwithstanding Carveth's (1994) claim that dialectical thinking is “essentially allied to the depressive position” (p. 154), an unfortunate lapse into Kleinian reductionism, there is much in his discussion of the dialectical perspective that is harmonious with our intersubjective viewpoint. We are, for example, in general agreement with his criticisms of “either/or” thinking in psychoanalysis and with his plea instead for “both/and”—that is, for “a synthesis in which neither pole is concretized or absolutized” (p 155). Indeed, it has long been an aim of the intersubjective approach to “encompass domains of experience mapped separately by earlier, competing theories, so that an