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Dr. Zucker replies:
HOFFMAN SETS THE TONE for this scholarly exchange by alerting the reader to my character—a person who "portrays himself as one who has the courage to face up to his responsibilities", elevates "himself as the voice of reason" and who has a hard time tolerating "ambiguity and complexity." Forewarned, the reader may now turn a cautious eye on my attempt to stick to the subject.
In my paper (1993) I questioned the soundness of trends in psychoanalysis that discount the importance of reality in psychic living or that discourage a focus upon reality on the ground that reality is difficult if not impossible to establish. Social-contructivism was referred to briefly as exemplifying the latter trend; it was not the focus of my paper.
Questions such as "Whose Reality is it Anyway?" are the offspring of these trends, as are a number of clinical stances. Among them, that the patient's subjective reality is the only reality with which we can work; that the ambiguity of our material is such that it would be arrogant for the analyst to assume that his/her grasp of the facts (or his/her capacity to accumulate data) is any more substantial than the patient's; that "there is no way" to get at what is actually going on in the analytic interaction; and that as a consequence we can interpret only on the basis of our personal perspectives.
Hoffman claims that I have carelessly misrepresented his position, but he does admit that even as I carelessly misrepresent that I do so authoritatively. I'll let Hoffman's (1990), (1991) own statements speak for themselves by reiterating the quotes in my paper on which (among other statements) my reading of his position rests.
a."Granted that … some things seem to be closer to what is