Intersubjective-Systems Theory: A Phenomenological-Contextualist Psychoanalytic Perspective

Abstract

Abstract In this article I outline the essentials of my phenomenological-contextualist psychoanalytic perspective as it has been applied to a wide range of clinical phenomena, including development and pathogenesis, transference and resistance, forms of unconsciousness, emotional trauma, and therapeutic change. I characterize the therapeutic comportment entailed by these formulations as a kind of emotional dwelling. Notes 1Our use of the term intersubjective has never presupposed the attainment of symbolic thought, of a concept of oneself as a subject, of intersubjective relatedness in Stern's (1985) sense, or of mutual recognition as described by CitationBenjamin (1995). Nor have we confined our usage to the realm of unconscious nonverbal affective communication, as CitationOgden (1994) seems to do. We use intersubjective very broadly, to refer to any psychological field formed by interacting worlds of experience, at whatever developmental level those worlds may be organized. For us, intersubjective denotes neither a mode of experiencing nor a sharing of experience, but the contextual precondition for having any experience at all. In our vision, intersubjective fields and experiential worlds are equiprimordial, mutually constituting one another in circular fashion. 2See CitationAtwood (2011) for a brilliant exposition of how consistent adherence to a phenomenological-contextualist perspective can contribute to the grasping of, and therapeutic approach to, psychotic states. 3The therapeutic comportments and clinical attitudes entailed in a phenomenological-contextualist sensibility have also been explored by Coburn (in press), CitationMaduro (2013), and CitationOrange (2011).