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From: Christopher N. Heard, cheard@lanset.com
Date: 1/17/99
The debate around intersubjectivity appears to frequently devolve into some form of neo-Cartesianism, with discussions of subjects as reified entities which have some sort of independent ontological substantiality, giving rise to pseudo-problems (Wittgenstein) regarding the ability of these subjectivities to maintain their monadic unity while simultaneously bridging it intersubjectively. In so far as the field of therapy discusses postmodern categories of discourse it seems to be restricted to practices such as narrative therapy, while intersubjective theory seems to look to physical science, rather than social science, for it's concepts of relational realities, including the ever elusive human subject.
While it is true that some writers make reference to Eastern ontologies,such as the Vedic, to escape the bounds of the traditional and neo-traditional Western metaphysics of the subject,to do so is neither necessary nor especialy helpful. There has been an explosion of thought in the West, which has developed out of its own developmental imperatives, as conditioned by its history and culture, regarding the illusory nature of the subject. This dialogue has been particularly heated during the last half of this century, as marked by the arrival of Levi-Strauss's application of linguistic structuralism to social science. Of particular interest is the fact that Levi-Strass turned his attention at a very early point to psychoanalytic thought, arguing for a non-psychodynamic interpretation of the incest taboo, based in structural anthropology. Outside of Lacan, psychoanalysis has done little in a significant manner to return the favor. In addition, with the collapse of structuralism, and the rise of post-struturalist and post-modern theory, the horizon has shifted beyond that perceived by Levi-Strauss and Lacan, developing in manners which speak with significance to the psychoanalytic enterprise, offering ways to conceptualize, and then work, beyond the confines of the ghost in the machine which continues to haunt the narrative and relational models of intersubjectivity.
Because these discourses arise out of the discourses generated by the culture which has informed our own frames of reference, in a very radical sense our own logic and sensibility, they offer a way around the all to frequently atavistic resort to Eastern theories, which are embedded in a different cultural context, surrounded by , at best, significant vestiges of their mythico-religious orgins.
It sometimes looks as if intersubjective theory is working towards the same concepts employed in large areas of current aesthetic, social, and cultural theory, but from a site removed from intercourse with those sister efforts, hindering its development and giving rise to "problems" which have already been addressed, though certainly not conclusively answered, by those related discourses. It is puzzling to me that psychoanalysis, the roots of which were watered by an earlier cultural discourse (Oedipus and Helmholzian physicalism) has moved so far from its orgins, has become so incestuous. One possible basis for abandonment of its own best generative eclecticism, it has occurred to me, lies in its whoring after respectability as a science (read physical), rather than growing acceptance of itself as a simultaneously deconstructive and hermeneutic enterprise dealing in a fundamental manner with that experience near human drive, to derive meaning, not simply explanation.
Another aspect in this sale of its birthright may lie in the therapy room, where the empathic therapist must continually reckon with her or his contingency in loosening the boundaries of "subjectivity". By way of example I would utilize the existential vertigo which can grip almost physically on occasion when empathically engaged with someone in a psychotic state. The feeling is profoundly discomforting and disorienting, but in actuality is only an extreme version of what goes on with more "normal" patients on a continual basis. Thus we continue to venture up to our waists in the intersubjective ocean all the while clinging to the lifeline of subjective normalcy by way of which we haul ourselves back to the shore of "Sanity" and "Reality" at the end of the day, our lifeline, our sustaining myth, the attenuated version of atomistic subjectivity which continually infects our attempts to transcend its limitations.
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