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To the Editor
I'M WRITING THIS NOTE in response to Dr. Edgar A. Levenson's smooth updating of the premises which should inform the structure of psychoanalytic thinking (Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 16:1–15). I find much in his paper with which I agree—my own view is interactive, relational. But I wish to voice what seems to be an important caution.
First, I'm not sure that a relational epistemology must or should exclude a "depth" image. Dr. Levenson is opposed to reducing surface phenomena to depth genotypes. He associates the "depth" metaphor with mechanistic thinking which turns appearances into epiphenomena, and so argues against the necessity or desirability of the "depth" category. I, also, am reluctant to reduce relational presences to something "behind" them—but this in itself doesn't make the depth dimension superfluous.
I wish to argue that depth is a radically important quality of human experience, a well nigh universal structure (especially among all "higher" civilizations), like it or not. It represents a dimension of experience far more general than the mechanistic, and cannot be derived from the latter. Mechanistic meanings or uses of depth notions in science, philosophy or everyday life constitute only a contracted form this category of experience may take, albeit a potentially devastating one.
One cannot for long try to eliminate the depth dimension from perception, and this includes self-perception as well. We can try to discipline ourselves to think otherwise, but without our affective resonance, the multi-dimensional over- and undertones of experiencing,