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ATWOOD AND I (1984) SUMMARIZED the essentials of an intersubjective approach to psychoanalysis in our book, Structures of Subjectivity:
In its most general form, our thesis … is that psychoanalysis seeks to illuminate phenomena that emerge within a specific psychological field constituted by the intersection of two subjectivities—that of the patient and that of the analyst … [P]sychoanalysis is pictured here as a science of the intersubjective, focused on the interplay between the differently organized subjective worlds of the observer and the observed. The observational stance is always one within, rather than outside, the intersubjective field … being observed, a fact that guarantees the centrality of introspection and empathy as the methods of observation … Psychoanalysis is unique among the sciences in that the observer is also the observed … (pp. 41–42).
[C]linical phenomena … cannot be understood apart from the intersubjective contexts in which they take form. Patient and analyst together form an indissoluble psychological system, and it is this system that constitutes the empirical domain of psychoanalytic inquiry (p. 64).
The intersubjectivity principle was applied to the developmental system as well: