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Psychoanalytic assessment, the basis for psychoanalytic science, takes place within an evolving interaction between two subjectivities at conscious, preconscious, and unconscious levels in ways that preclude any traditionally Cartesian distinction between observer and observed; each influences the other so that the discoveries made are heavily conditioned by the method of discovery. Much more obviously than in physics, there can be no certainty in psychoanalysis (see Coltart, 1986). For example, the once-fashionable analytic interpretation, “What you are experiencing is …,” followed by some specific of the analyst's certainty, relies on a scientific point of view long since superseded. Likewise with psychic determinism: absolute is obsolete. Our inclinations toward certainty can better be located in the expectation that both participants in a fruitful analysis will be changed by their encounter.
It may be impossible for anyone, howevermuch an outsider, to assess an ongoing psychoanalytic process without in some sense becoming a party to it. Our contributors to this issue of Psychoanalytic Inquiry are especially subject to such a liability, given their presence in the room by proxy via a tape recorder. In addition, they inevitably must contend with difficulties inherent in