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I want to start by expressing my appreciation for the deeply thoughtful discussion of my work provided by Gerhardt, Sweetnam, and Borton. It is gratifying to see my ideas taken up in their project of formulating the intersubjective turn in psychoanalysis, even though at times I will want to question these formulations or approach them from a slightly different angle. As these authors have not only sought to synthesize my theoretical contribution but also to supply clinical applications, they have offered me a welcome opportunity to respond to a discussion of practical issues. I am particularly grateful for this opportunity to rethink and clarify some of my key concepts in relation to these clinical applications.
It may be relevant to begin with a word about the experience of listening to a rendering of my own ideas by an “other.” It is a mixed experience to hear another person's reception of one's ideas, even when the reception is basically recognizing and affirming, because the ideas—an expression of my subjectivity—are returned transformed, no longer identical to what they once were, now amalgamated with the other's subjectivity, partly other. Ogden (1996) takes precisely this starting point in the introduction to his elegant disquisition on intersubjectivity, telling the reader that she or he will make something different of this book, something that is the reader's own.
I think this experience illustrates something elusive about the relation between negation and recognition. Any other person's reading