‘The Analyst's Subjectivity and the Analyst's Objectivity’ by Owen Renik (Including the Response by Marcia Cavell)

This paper and discussion were put on the web site on 8 June 1998 and were replaced by the paper by Esman on 20 July. Marcia Cavell's written response to Renik is summarised below (albeit in compressed form) as it influenced subsequent discussants. Her discussion is published in full in this edition of the International Journal. First, a brief summary of Renik's paper. Renik argues that the recent emphasis on intersubjectivity has sometimes been misunderstood to involve the impossibility of achieving objectivity in clinical psychoanalysis. This is not so, he argues, and to support this he offers a pragmatic definition of analytic objectivity alongside the analyst's ‘irreducible subjectivity’. It is only when the analyst takes into account the absoluteness of subjectivity that any objectivity is possible.

He moves straight to a clinical case, that of Ethan, a 31-year-old physician, who has been a patient of Renik's for one year. Ethan idealises Renik whom he sees as a tolerant father. Renik is aware of the idealisation and the eventual likelihood of Ethan's discovery of Renik's clay feet. He discusses in detail a session in which Ethan describes how he had managed to save a young woman brought into the accident and emergency department of Ethan's hospital. Renik is impressed by his patient's conscientiousness and notes that Ethan does not seem proud of his efforts. He plans to bring this up. Ethan surprises Renik by saying that he thinks Renik's attention has strayed, but then carries on. Renik eventually has the opportunity to interpret Ethan's anxiety about Renik's reaction to him voicing his success. The session proceeds and this anxiety about success is connected by Ethan to his somewhat authoritarian father and the possibility that Renik might be competitive, even if he didn't show it. Renik reflects on the exchanges and at a certain point recalls that he had earlier turned his head to check his answering machine, as he had been expecting a call fr