Discussion

I would like to begin by making a distinction between intersubjectivity as it is most usually understood in psychoanalytic literature and how it is portrayed in some of the more radical versions of relational analysis. Essentially I want to state a case for a psychoanalysis that is firmly rooted in an understanding that psychoanalytic data, and primarily the relationship between analyst and patient, is intersubjectively created. What I want to argue against, however, are some of the theoretical and clinical implications that some of the relational psychoanalysts have developed and which are illustrated in your paper. I think that the points where we most profoundly disagree are on theoretical and technical issues relating to how clinical transformation, change, is achieved in analysis.

As I understand it, a psychoanalytic approach which is intersubjective acknowledges that the analyst, when he or she is working well, will listen to the patient from within, if I can put it like this, his or her own personality. That is to say they listen by registering their own, undoubtedly idiosyncratic response to impart meaning to what they hear. This is their means, their only means, to make a judgement about the emotional quality and meaning of what they listen to. This is an unfortunate fact about our profession, we have no other measuring instrument. There is no avoiding this; in the circumstances, we can only try to make the best of a bad job. We do have the analytical setting including the internal analytic stance to contain us in this job and to enable us to think about the thoughts, feelings, memories or bodily sensations that occur in us. Nevertheless, as psychoanalysts we are also very aware that much of our personal response to our patient will be unconscious and more likely to be enacted rather than contained and understood. Hence we play our part, consciously and unconsciously, in creating the situations we find ourselves in, in any analysis. The thing that is created