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PD 9(3):307-318 (1999)

The Detective and the Princess: Commentary on Paper by Jeanne Wolff Bernstein

Author: Lynne Layton PhD

Abstract

Dr. Bernstein's Paper Raises Some Of The Most Crucial Questions one can ask about the potential pitfalls of the way the relational, intersubjective, and interpersonal schools conceptualize not only countertransference but therapeutic action in general.1 The concerns she so cogently presents and analyzes in depth are concerns I have heard expressed at just about every conference I have been to in recent years; her paper is thus an important contribution that surely will enable those with misgivings about the two-person paradigm to ground their misgivings in the theory Bernstein provides. For me, the two most significant questions Bernstein raises are:

Does the two-person paradigm do away with the unconscious? Suggesting that it does, Bernstein appears to be following in the tradition of Lacan, who harshly criticized ego psychology for abandoning Freud's most radical discovery: the dynamic unconscious. Like Lacan, who also criticized object relations theory for replacing triadic with dyadic relations, Bernstein strongly critiques two-person theories that
1. Although there are many differences between these schools, in what follows I refer to the target of Bernstein's critique as either the two-person or the relational paradigm. I am grateful to Susan Fairfield (personal communication) for pointing out the confusions that arise from the very different ways that Lacanians and Anglo-Americans use the same words, especially intersubjective, ego, and relational (a helpful guide to Lacanian terminology is Evans, 1996). Although the Lacanians understand their theory to be intersubjective and relational, my sense it that they embed these terms in what the two-person paradigm would call a one-person theory. Although Bernstein agrees with much of the relational paradigm's critique of the classical paradigm, her theorizing, too, endorses a one-person perspective.
Page 307
she believes work primarily in the dyadic realm of what Lacan called the Imaginary.
Has the two-person paradigm's emphas

PD 9(3):307-318 (1999)

The Detective and the Princess: Commentary on Paper by Jeanne Wolff Bernstein

Author: Lynne Layton PhD

Abstract

Does the two-person paradigm do away with the unconscious? Suggesting that it does, Bernstein appears to be following in the tradition of Lacan, who harshly criticized ego psychology for abandoning Freud's most radical discovery: the dynamic unconscious. Like Lacan, who also criticized object relations theory for replacing triadic with dyadic relations, Bernstein strongly critiques two-person theories that
1. Although there are many differences between these schools, in what follows I refer to the target of Bernstein's critique as either the two-person or the relational paradigm. I am grateful to Susan Fairfield (personal communication) for pointing out the confusions that arise from the very different ways that Lacanians and Anglo-Americans use the same words, especially intersubjective, ego, and relational (a helpful guide to Lacanian terminology is Evans, 1996). Although the Lacanians understand their theory to be intersubjective and relational, my sense it that they embed these terms in what the two-person paradigm would call a one-person theory. Although Bernstein agrees with much of the relational paradigm's critique of the classical paradigm, her theorizing, too, endorses a one-person perspective.
Page 307
she believes work primarily in the dyadic realm of what Lacan called the Imaginary.
Has the two-person paradigm's emphas