Response to “Comparing Fruit and Oranges: Response to Philip A. Ringstrom” by Robert D. Stolorow and George E. Atwood

Because they see their Intersubjective Systems theory as an “instance” of the larger category of Relational psychoanalysis, Stolorow and Atwood claim that it is “logically incoherent” to compare their theory with Relational psychoanalysis in the manner done in the symposium (Volume 20, No. 2, 2010. pp. 195–250). Their sweeping dismissal of the symposium on the basis of what they refer to as a “category mistake” makes me wonder if they even read the five articles in it. Had they done so, they would have had to reckon with their argument being exactly the opposite of that of a key defender of their theory (Jacobs, 2010) who argues that Relational Psychoanalysis should be seen as a subset of Intersubjective Systems theory. The fact that Stolorow and Atwood employ ideas from philosophy that are exceedingly hard to keep straight—even among themselves—is why in my reply to the symposium discussants, I stated that arguments regarding “category mistakes”, “levels of abstraction” (e.g. “explanatory versus phenomenology”) and so forth are at best confusing and at worse, specious. Meanwhile, given that this comparison symposium follows in the footsteps of their own critique of Relational psychoanalysis, their efforts to cast doubt on it are not only poorly argued, they flagrantly are transparent.