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THE EXPERIENCE OF psychic uniqueness, as suffered and undergone, never becomes fully rational in empirical and systematic analysis. It always also remains partly arational, partly irrational. Only after its emergence into awareness may it be delineated and shared in relatedness and communication with others.
Nor, of course, need it be interpreted as extending outward from libido instincts (biological model) nor inward from ego-interpersonal relations (sociological model). However it may be interpreted, it is at least what it is experienced as being, a psychic process taking place under psychological conditions within a psychoanalytic field of inquiry (psychological model).2
If a sense of uniqueness is first irrational, disjunctive, private (unconscious), and sharing it makes it rational, integrative, public (conscious), clearly this emergent awareness during psychoanalytic therapy provides the important base for developing the individual self and the social persona. Someone is now here, so to speak, in the patient, who can hope to confront his problems in living; for he has, in fact, already changed their psychology.
In this paper, I consider some questions about making the irrational rational in psychoanalytic therapy, with special reference to the place of psychic uniqueness in that shared experience. I consider especially, the question of whether a sense of uniqueness is, in fact, a deeply irrational process as it emerges at the fringes and