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In previous books and articles, Robert Stolorow and his colleagues have persuasively argued that the proper domain of psychoanalytic investigation inevitably consists of the experiences, events and meanings that constitute and emerge from the unique psychological field created by the intersection of the subjectivities of any given patient-analyst pair. Hence, their use of the term, ‘intersubjectivity’. In the present volume, the authors attempt to expand their position into ‘a broad-based philosophy of phychoanalysis’ (p. ix), by elaborating upon their view that all meanings, indeed all human phenomena including psychological development, are embedded in and dependent upon social, historical and relational contexts. It is the latter assumption that gives rise to the term, ‘contextualism’.
The inspiration for this work comes not only from the clinical situation, but from sources outside of psychoanalysis, such as the writings of Mannheim, Tomkins, the Gestalt psychologists and the philosophers Bakhtin, Gadamer, Hegel and Wittgenstein. In particular, Orange et al. are interested in using the epistemological implications of these sources to advance a theory of knowledge and meaning that supports their view of analysis as intersubjective and contextual. In the course of their discussion, they raise and address many important questions and issues that are relevant to psychoanalytic theory and practice.
The first chapter presents an overview of the basic principles of intersubjectivity theory followed by a vignette intended to illustrate their clinical application. Here, readers will encounter statements and brief discussions of important foundational concepts of intersubjectivity. These include the social constructivist idea that meaning and experience emerge for each member of the analytic dyad in a mutually, albeit unconsciously, constituted and irreducibly relational context; the assertion that ‘psychological development and pathogenesis are best conceptualised in terms