Response to Review

I very much appreciate Dr. Botticelli's thoughtful response to my book. The review has enhanced my own understanding of the issues about which I have written and has stimulated me to carry my thinking considerably further.

Botticelli's review speaks to a tension felt by many psychoanalytically inclined therapists who have, at various points in their lives, been social activists or critically concerned with social issues. How does one bring psychological and social reality into relation with each other, on the conceptual level, and on the level of action? On the conceptual level my ideal is a model that locates the psychological in the social and the social in the psychological. Such a formulation establishes a tension between the integrity of each domain and the inextricability of each from the other. I agree with Boticelli that psychological reductionism fails to recognize the integrity of the social realm; social reductionism does the same with respect to the psychological realm. At the other extreme, an overemphasis on the integrity of each domain leads to viewing the psychological and the social as fundamentally separate in a way that artificially divides up reality. Recognizing that the social and the psychological are inextricably intertwined is different from having one domain colonize the other. Analogously, relational psychoanalysis has come to view the intrapsychic as interpersonal and the interpersonal as intrapsychic. Each domain is viewed as having its unique characteristics, yet the two are viewed as inseparable. Botticelli also seems to be struggling with these complex issues in making a plea for the recognition of the integrity of the socioeconomic world, on one hand, while decrying the “reification” of society, on the other, as if