The Self-as-Subject in Psychoanalysis: II. The Subject in Analysis

This paper seeks to extend previous conclusions regarding the nature of subjectivity to the analytic relation and process. The position of the self as consciously experiencing subject of engagement in the analytic process or dreaming is contrasted with the self-as-agent of unconscious defenses like repression. In one instance subject and agent are conjoined, in the others disjoined. Repression, like other unconscious actions, has no subject but only agency. Lacan's views, particularly with regard to unconscious subjectivity, are explored and his failures to deal with issues of subjectivity and agency critiqued. Issues of the mutual involvement of subjectivity and language, especially use of pronouns, are considered and the applications to analytic aspects of intersubjectivity discussed. Applications to problems related to the understanding of transference, interpretation, self-discovery, and understanding in analysis are discussed. These views are applied to a reassessment of concepts of intersubjectivity insofar as the subjectivity of the other cannot be known directly but only inferred from objective data. Intersubjectivity comes to connote relations between persons who are known to each other as objects whose subjectivity is inferred or assumed.

Limitations imposed in consequence on empathy, projective identification, and transference-countertransference interactions in the analytic process are suggested.