“She Thinks of Me as Thinking, and Therefore I Exist as a Thinker”: Commentary on Paper by Lewis Aron

CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOANALYSIS TENDS TO MOVE TOWARD A MULTI-plicity of theoretical perspectives. This seems to reflect the general crisis of the great narratives of the beginning of the century—narratives through which our vision of the world is viewed.

In the past few decades, the belief in being able to specify scientific, objective, and universal truths has receded. In fact, we are more and more interested in the procedures through which we learn and in the influence that our subjective tendencies, our social and cultural background, have on the nature of what we know.

Differentiation of theories produces widespread fear in many that psychoanalysis is moving toward some sort of “psychotic fragmentation” in which many theories, split from one another, lose the possibility of holding a dialogue and the capability of identifying with psychoanalysis itself, being so different. This is because no theory—by tolerating conflict and contradiction—gives up the idea of representing the whole psychoanalytic movement (Aron, 1996).

Given the situation in psychoanalysis today, it is comforting to meet an author such as Lewis Aron. With acute postmodern sensitivity, he captures the vitality and richness of psychoanalysis itself in its pluralism and diversity, he is able to recognize its theoretical discontinuity and