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In his recent book A Fresh Look at Psychoanalysis: The View from Self Psychology Goldberg (1988), has addressed some crucial conceptual and philosophical questions embedded in our field. Specifically, my interest was piqued by chapter 4, “The Tension Between Realism and Relativism in Psychoanalysis,” and chapter 5, “Self Psychology and External Reality,” where Goldberg wrestles with such basic and perennial philosophical questions as the nature of the real and the limits of human knowledge as they affect psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic theory. Goldberg's chapters prompted me to consider again these basic philosophical issues and their salience for questions of psychoanalytic theory. In particular, recent thought about these questions bears on the nature of transference and countertransference and has supported the development of intersubjective and relational perspectives in psychoanalysis.
Philosophers have long made distinctions their stock in trade. In that tradition, I attempt here a modest and limited task: to draw three distinctions and to point out aspects of their relevance for psychoanalytic theory. Specifically, I distinguish between subjectivity and subjectivism, between subjectivism and relativism, and between objectivism and realism. A related but larger task, the consideration of the implications of various versions of philosophical realism for psychoanalytic theory, must await a future and more extensive treatment.
Today the concept of subjectivity roughly replaces Freud's psychic