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One-hundred years after Freud introduced psychoanalysis as the “laborious but completely reliable method” of his investigations of the “psychical process”—investigations “which also constitute a therapeutic procedure”1—we still struggle to understand in all its complexity the revolution he began. To this epistemic task Orange brings high academic credentials in philosophy, psychology, and psychoanalytic studies, as well as clinical experience in psychoanalytic therapy. Starting with the assumption that psychoanalytic understanding is central to healing emotional wounds, she traces the historical-philosophical roots of the concept of understanding from Plato and Aristotle via Kant, Hegel, and Dilthey to Heidegger and Gadamer. She rejects both traditional objectivism and contemporary relativism as too extreme and theory-bound. Instead, she argues for a more clinical, perspectival realism that conceptualizes psychoanalysis as “making sense together,” an emotional understanding in which both analysand and analyst are active participants.
The pivotal clinical concepts of understanding, explaining, and empathy are traced from ancient historic roots via Spinoza, Buber, and Peirce to Kohut. Similarly, Orange explores the concepts of individual psychological development from Freud and Ferenczi to recent infant research as exemplified by Stern. She examines the challenge by relational theorists (Racker, Gill, Hoffman, Mitchell, Greenberg) to most developmental conceptions but counters their