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For the Past Fifteen Years, the analytic literature has been dominated by the intersubjective, interpersonal, and relational approaches. Reacting to the reign of positivistic, authoritarian, ill-conceived notions of the analyst as all-knowing, perfectly analyzed, and neutral, what has become known as the one-person perspective has been effectively set aside as a viable model. Or has it? While most people seem to agree with the basic relational and intersubjective approaches outlined by Aron, Benjamin, Ghent, Hirsch, Levenson, Mitchell, Stolorow, and innumerable colleagues, many people have balked at both the theory and potential applications of social construction. The constructivist model began with Hoffman's (1983) classic paper, “The Patient as Interpreter of the Analyst's Experience,” and most clinicians read it with relief. Much of the literature that followed informed clinicians of the subjective nature of the analytic relationship—something they already knew from their own clinical experience.
Finally, all the things we were actually experiencing with patients were being said out loud. We were off the hook for not being perfect. And we were freed from trying to practice in ways that did not work very well. We could stop being authoritarian, rude, and withholding. We could be human beings and analysts at the same time. This trend toward humanizing the analytic process and acknowledging the inherent mutuality seemed unstoppable.
But lately the tide seems to be turning. People who were comfortable with acknowledging the patient as interpreter of the analyst's experience are not so comfortable with the notion of everything that happens in the