Commentary on Judith Rustin's Paper on Infancy, Agency, and Intersubjectivity

Judith Rustin makes a creative argument for the application to the analytic situation of formal interaction principles and developmental constructs derived from mother-infant research. After briefly summarizing her interesting synthesis of the three major concerns that inform her paper—mother-infant interaction models, intersubjectivity in psychoanalysis, and her view of the sense of agency as the variable linking early development in the mother-infant dyad to change or growth in the analytic situation—I would like then to extend her discussion of the concept of agency and the nature of the therapeutic process as reflected in her case examples. Especially, I would encourge greater consideration of the patient's role in shaping the process and of the analyst's role as participating subject. While Rustin in her introductory and summary statements asserts that both participants are coconstructing the ongoing process, the case material underplays the patient's active role (both in self-regulation and in a purposeful, self-initiated impact on, or use of the analyst), and the analyst's countertransferential (or self-regulatory) activity. These limitations are not inherent in the mother-infant interaction models, in the model of intersubjectivity proposed by Stolorow and his colleagues, (Stolorow, Brandchaft, and Atwood, 1987) or in other self psychology paradigms. I expect that Rustin would argue that the issues I raise are reflected implicitly in her paper and I might agree. Yet I think they can be spelled out in a way that enriches her arguments and the material she presents.

Rustin focuses on the seminal work of Louis Sander, who applies the model of biological “system” to the mother-infant dyad. This model