Dualism, Self-Reflexivity, and Intersubjectivity: Commentary on Paper by Sheldon Bach

There are two types of people, it has been said—those who divide the world into two categories and those who do not. Sheldon Bach, on superficial reading, would appear to fit into the former group. A more careful reading of his article, however, indicates that Bach is not content merely to propose a dichotomy between subjective and objective self-awareness. He also attempts to describe how normal human functioning comes to involve an integration of these two perspectives, subjective and objective, on the self and how pathology involves a failure of this integration. Although his dualistic premises hamper his account of these developments, Bach's (1985, 1994) analysis of self-reflexivity provides a crucial mediation between contemporary Freudian theory and modern intersubjective views (e.g., Cavell, 1993; Benjamin, 1995; Aron, 1996). In this commentary, I argue that the reflexive self-awareness discussed by Bach emerges only within the context of intersubjectivity.

It is always a pleasure to read Bach's writing, mainly because of his ability to link abstract theoretical notions to evocative, phenomenological descriptions of clinical material. In his article here, Bach uses striking examples of his patients' states of mind to illuminate fundamental epistemological and ontological problems—in this case, that of dualism—and also shows how seemingly mundane clinical