SELF AND SYSTEMS

Intersubjective Systems Theory AFallibilist’sJourney Donna M. Orange Institute for the Psychoanalytic Study of Subjectivity New York, New York, USA

Intersubjective systems theory is the view that personal experience always emerges, maintains itself, and transforms in relational contexts. It is held for reasons of personal inclinations, philosophical belief, and clinical conviction. As a clinical sensibility, it primarily includes an emphasis on the emotional convictions or organizing principles that systematize experience, the personal engagement of the analyst, and the refusal to argue about reality.

Key words: intersubjective; system; psychoanalysis; fallibilism; reductionism; phe- nomenology; experience; contextualism; hermeneutics

We grace our beliefs by calling them theories. This use of the terms intersubjective and inter- (Emmanuel Ghent) subjectivity differs from some related ideas. In Why is intersubjective systems theory so our usage (Atwood & Stolorow, 1984; Stolorow compelling for me? First, a few words are pro- et al., 1987; Stolorow & Atwood, 1992; Orange, vided about this psychoanalytic approach. This 1995; Orange et al.,1997;Stolorowet al., theory examines the field—two personal worlds 2002) intersubjective describes the emergent of experience in the system they create and relatedness between any two or more people from which they emerge—in human develop- and does not refer primarily to a developmen- ment and in any form of psychoanalytic treat- tal achievement. Daniel Stern’s earlier work ment. Because of this focus, intersubjectivity (1985), for example, names as “the intersub- theory also implies a contextualist view of de- jective self” a stage and process of recognition velopment and of pathogenesis, describes the of another’s subjectivity as connected and re- emergence and modification of subjectivity (the sponsive to one’s own. This mutual recogni- experiential world), and defines all these pro- tion, also brought center stage in Benjamin’s cesses as irreducibly relational. The observa- work (Benjamin, 1995), may be a late achieve- tional/participatory focus is the evolving psy- ment in the intersubjective field of an analysis, chological field constituted by the interplay especially in patients, such as those described between the differently organized experiential by Guntrip (1969) and Kohut (1971). Mutual worlds of child and caregivers, patient and ana- recognition intersubjectivity thus differs from lyst, and so on. Informally,it means I am always our contextualist conception of an intersubjec- trying not only to describe experience (yours, tive field. Instead this mutual-recognition in- mine, and ours) in this temporal–relational con- tersubjectivity may occur within an always al- text but also to understand in what relational ready existing intersubjective world (Orange, contexts we became the people who participate 2008). I see intersubjective systems theory as and experience as we do. one form of American relational theory—a variant more rooted in continental philosophies of phenomenology and hermeneutics.

Address for correspondence: Donna M. Orange, Ph.D., PsyD, 315 West There are at least three meanings of “why” 86th Street, 9E, New York, NY 10024. 917-478-9290. [email protected] involved as I attempt to explain my involvement

Self and Systems: Ann. N.Y. Acad. Sci. 1159: 237–248 (2009). doi: 10.1111/j.1749-6632.2008.04347.x C 2009 New York Academy of Sciences. ! 237 238 Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences with intersubjective systems psychoanalysis. to act. Afterwards, we reflect so that we may First, it can mean, “How did it come about better understand how to act or not to act in historically?” as in the question, “How did it the future. This is the why of purpose and of happen that a subway was built along Broad- responsibility. This third form of “why?” is es- way in New York and not along Amsterdam pecially significant if one believes, as I do, that Avenue?” This is a question about context and refusal by clinicians to think about theory, to about history. I will call it the “why of influ- examine and reexamine our beliefs, or to make ence,” a question about what developmental choices among competing theories, means re- circumstances, intellectual and personal, led maining unconscious about the presuppositions me to embrace the psychoanalytic sensibility of actually influencing our clinical work (Orange, intersubjective systems theory. Although I have 1995). In addition, making our theories explicit generally regarded the writing of intellectual allows us to become aware sometimes that ex- autobiographies as an exercise for 90-year-old perience may be calling them into question. philosophers, a collaborator with the authors of Describing this fallibilist’sa journey will, Faces in a Cloud (Atwood & Stolorow, 1993) can therefore, have three parts: (1) a personal story, never avoid the question of the personal origins (2) a series of sketchy arguments, and (3) a brief of theoretical preferences. account of a clinical and ethical sensibility. Asecondmeaningof“why?”concernsthe question of grounds, or reasons, for believ- ing what I believe. Please note that we are The Why of Influence speaking of belief, not of claims to unassailable knowledge. Granted, we psychoanalysts are de- Personal history, of course, can lead one in voted to the study of the emotional life and we various theoretical directions and does not pro- value the intuitive and the imaginative. Still, vide logical grounds for developing or holding it is incumbent upon us, I believe, to adopt atheorybutratherissuggestiveofinclinations and communicate reasonable beliefs about our or leanings. I am relating something of my own work within a conversation in the “community personal history because my history has made of scholars,” as American philosopher Charles it difficult for me to accept theories of innate Sanders Peirce would have said. Thus, the sec- aggression. These theories seem to me too sim- ond part of this “why?” concerns why I find it ple to account for generosity and compassion reasonable to believe as I do and not otherwise. and also seem to me to discount the frustra- This means I must tell you, at least briefly, on tion that results from actual deprivation and what intellectual grounds I prefer intersubjec- maltreatment. I was, therefore, first attracted tive systems theory to the other psychoanalytic to self psychology, which explicitly refuses in- theories thus far developed. This is the why of stinct theories, and later to intersubjective sys- reasons. tems theory,the latter for their phenomenology Athirdmeaningof“why?”is“whatfor?” of personal experience, its thorough-going rela- Why do theoretical differences matter? For tional contextualism, and its resistance against what purposes, for example, do we think so all forms of reductionism. I believe our deep- carefully about our work? This question ad- est convictions about ourselves grow primarily dresses the Aristotelian question of final causal- from the way we are treated as children and ity, of course, but takes on a special quality later and not from anything inherently wrong when the “why?” concerns thinking. Heideg- with us. The opposite idea would have con- ger’s protests notwithstanding, I believe with firmed my deepest organizing principles and the American pragmatists, and with Hans-

Georg Gadamer, that thinking is inherently aFallibilism is the recognition that we may always be mistaken, espe- practical, that we think in order to be prepared cially when we take our own point of view as the whole truth. Orange: Intersubjective Systems Theory 239 would have led me to despair, both personally the analyst’s contributions to clinical impasses) and in my clinical work. especially compelling for me. I was born into a troubled family that be- During my years studying and teaching phi- came a large one. As the oldest of 10 chil- losophy, I had left the convent and engaged in dren, I was responsible for child care from my my first course of psychotherapy. This ended youngest years and for keeping a fragile family with my therapist’s words: “What I still don’t system running in many practical ways: cook- understand about you is why you are wasting ing, laundry, cow milking, fire building, and your life in philosophy, when you would be such so on. I envied children from smaller fami- a wonderful therapist.” At the time I had a lies; sleeping three, four, or five in a room, teaching position in philosophy and a disserta- I could not imagine the solitude that allowed tion to write, so his words were unwelcome, to Descartes to develop his isolated-mind philoso- say the least. In the context of my mother’s pen- phy.In addition, I felt responsible for protecting chant for diagnosing her children, these words my younger siblings, as much as possible, from sounded like a curse. parental violence and neglect. Each of us had But they intrigued me, and, with my dis- nicknames; mine were “worthless” and “good- sertation defended, I began to take counseling for-nothing,” which were transformed, at an courses at night to see if the shoe fit. I de- early age, into my personal “organizing prin- cided that it did and returned to New York ciples” or shame-ridden emotional convictions to study at Yeshiva University’s Ferkauf Grad- about who I was and about how I should expect uate School where I found Beatrice Beebe, Jim others to regard and to treat me. Fosshage, Neil Skolnick, and, most important To survive this situation, I became a book- for me, Robert Stolorow. My dissertation there worm and a church mouse. From the li- concerned the incoherence of eclecticism and brary, my only childhood refuge, I escaped of multiple-theory approaches to psychoana- into the convent, an even more rigid, author- lytic theorizing. Next I joined the first class in itarian, and moralistic system than my family the newly founded Institute for the Psychoana- (Armstrong, 1981). There, however, I met some lytic Study of Subjectivity where my first super- great women and found a reasonably good ed- visor was George Atwood, a man whose pas- ucation. As an undergraduate, my love was for sion for clinical understanding has surely been languages and literature, and my ambition was the single greatest influence on my psychoan- to teach high school. In those days, however, alytic work. George and I have collaborated we had no choice whatever in deciding our col- now for 20 years as supervisors to each other, lege major. After 5 years teaching intermediate thinking partners, and friends. During the early school, I was sent by my religious congregation years of working with George, his intense and to study philosophy because our college needed deeply rooted interests in philosophy sent me someone in that field. Fortunately,in spite of my back to philosophy myself. I begin to reread serious doubts that I was intelligent enough for pragmatism and continental philosophy, espe- graduate school, I came to love philosophy and cially Hans-Georg Gadamer’s Truth and Method ultimately wrote a dissertation at Fordham on (1975/1991), and to write some articles that the development of the religious ideas of C. S. eventually became the core of my 1995 Emo- Pierce. From him I learned pragmatism, falli- tional Understanding (Orange, 1995). bilism, my conviction that the search for truth These articles evoked the interest of is an inherently communal project, and what I closet philosopher Robert Stolorow,b whose would today call perspectival realism. Probably the absolutisms of my family and the Catholic bRobert has recently completed his own doctorate in philosophy with church made Peirce’s fallibilism (and later self adissertationonHeidegger,whichformedthebasisofTrauma and Human psychology’s fallibilistic emphasis on exploring Existence (Stolorow, 2007). 240 Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences encouragement helped me to write the book is learned quite differently, of course) has af- and who, on its publication, invited me to work fected my clinical work and impressed me more with him and George. Bob has also become deeply with the inescapability of the influence atreasuredconversationpartnerandagood of one’s own experiential world on the ways one friend. This three-way collaboration has gone understands. I have come to see, with Schleier- far to moderate my “worthless and good-for- macher (1977), that misunderstanding is our nothing” self-experience, although of course, it basic condition and that understanding must returns several times a day to haunt me. be earnestly desired and sought. In the 1990s, my philosophical interests in- Lynne Jacobs (Institute for Contemporary cluded extensive study of Wittgenstein, whose Psychoanalysis, Los Angeles, CA, personal therapeutic conception of philosophy,language communication, 2003) asked me an intriguing games, family resemblances, and forms of life question about the why of influence. I have said became an important inspiration for a series of above that Schleiermacher, Peirce, Gadamer, papers (Orange, 2002, 2003a, 2003b) and for a and Wittgenstein formed my thinking and con- chapter in our last collaborative book (Stolorow vinced me of fallibilism, perspectival realism, et al., 2002). Together with my rereading of the dialogic search for understanding, and so Gadamer’s dialogical hermeneutics, Wittgen- on. She wondered whether, instead, I was at- stein (1953/2001) has focused my attention on tracted to these thinkers because “they spoke questions of language and meaning in psycho- to the yearnings/passion you have for genuine, analytic thought and practice. Most recently nonrejecting, nonreductionist, fallibilistic dia- my philosophical studies have also focused on logue.” For a systems theorist or for a Gadame- the work of Martin Buber, Merleau-Ponty, and rian hermeneut, I believe, this cannot be an Emmanuel Levinas.c either/or question. My “senses of things,” my A final and closely related formative personal and philosophical convictions, the be- influence—engendered by collaborations and liefs that I grace by calling them theories, have friendships with European colleagues—has emerged from a lifelong dialogue between and been my return to learning languages. In 1997, among the yearnings and leanings that my IbeganseriouslytostudyGerman,followedin emotional and relational history has shaped, 2001 by Italian. As you may imagine, learn- my readings and conversations with philoso- ing languages in one’s late 50s is no easy task, phers and psychoanalysts, and my clinical work. and the fluency achievable by younger people There cannot have been any unidirectional in- simply never comes. Nevertheless, at this stage fluence in this system. I have indeed sought out of life, and perhaps because of the effort re- my intellectual influences, even though I expe- quired, I have found myself frequently aware rience them as having come to me as amazingly that I do not understand what I had thought unexpected gifts. Iunderstood.Iseethatalanguageisamore- Without making this a tidy story, therefore, or-less untranslatable world of experience, cul- Iwouldsummarizebysayingthatmylifehis- ture, literature, music, and gesture. One of my tory,my philosophical and language studies, my Italian teachers, asked by students, “How do clinical work, and my experience of collabora- you say ...in Italian?” often responded, “You tion have all conspired to lead me down the don’t. An Italian would not say that.” Then she path of intersubjective systems theory, to whose explained what an Italian might say in such a reasons and grounds I now turn. situation. Gradually this experience of learn- ing second languages (one’s “mother tongue” The Why of Reasons

cThese philosophers, along with Gadamer and Wittgenstein, structure For me, to explain why intersubjective sys- my forthcoming book (Orange, 2009). tems theory is my psychoanalysis is not to Orange: Intersubjective Systems Theory 241 provide a set of unassailable or irrefutable log- What I bring is just an enduring set of ical proofs. Rather I will try to show that this possibilities and leanings, nothing actual point of view is the natural outgrowth of more until I meet you. Whatever I experience basic convictions that I find reasonable to hold. in the situation with you is not something Some of these convictions take the form of re- inside of me but rather it is my partici- fusals to accept what has been urged upon me, pation in the world we inhabit together. but I will attempt also to give these ideas a Levinas (1969) would have said that I be- positive form. A caution regards the interde- come I only in response to the face of the pendence of these ideas—they form a “web other, the widow,the orphan, the stranger, of belief ” (Quine, 1978)—and thus can sound in a word, to the destitute. circular. (2) All experience is interpretive and thus (1) It seems to me axiomatic, as it does perspectival. This means no one and no to all relational theorists known to me, group of people can take more than a par- that personal experience takes form, is tial view of anything. Our horizons of pos- maintained, and transforms itself in re- sibility of experiencing are limited, both lational contexts. It seems to me impos- spatially and temporally.This means that I sible that what we call experience could have no God’s eye authority to say that the ever yet be experience without its inter- patient is projecting or that I know an en- pretation by the explicit or implicit com- actment is going on around here. Even a munity.d I become I—with my character- community’s view,be it classical Freudian, istic ways of thinking, feeling, believing, ego psychological, Kohutian, Kleinian, and living with others—only within com- Sullivanian, or systems theory, can only plexly nested and overlapping systems: in- provide a partial access to complex sys- fant caregiver, family,culture, religion, oc- tems. Our only possibility is to search cidental lifeworlds (Husserl, 1936/1970; together for understandings, always Merleau-Ponty, 1945/1962), and so on. provisional. How I experience myself and the other- (3) The inherent temporality of experience ness of the other depends upon these sys- means that development and change— tems. It seems to me that when I bring despite our longings for stability, relia- my organization of experience to a rela- bility, and certainty—are as important tional situation, what I bring is a range of as what endures. In the psychoanalytic expectancies, emotional convictions, and situation, for example, mutually regu- ways I am prepared to respond or react. lated experiences form unstable, though This range may be narrower or wider, de- past-loaded, systems. These are always pending on my whole life history in rela- organizing and reorganizing themselves, tional contexts and on what possibilities both continually and in fits and starts. I of therapeutic transformation have been am indebted not only to my philosoph- available to me so far. Then this specific ical studies and to my self-psychological situation evokes particular aspects of my beginnings but also to the pioneering organized experience with more or less in- works of researchers on early develop- tensity,again depending on many particu- ment (Sander, 1982; Fogel, 1993; The- lar aspects of the intersubjective situation. len & Smith, 1994; Beebe & Lachmann, 2002) for this understanding. At the same time, this conviction places me somewhat d This view of experience need not exclude the kind of prereflective self- apart from those forms of relational theo- awareness or self-familiarity described by Zahavi F. M. (2003). Selbstgefuehl: Eine historisch-theoretische Erkundung. Frankfurt-am-Main: Suhrkamp; Zahavi rizing that have tended to disparage a de- (2005). velopmental emphasis in psychoanalysis. 242 Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences

To think developmentally does not re- versation, and his concept of “working quire a linear stage theory, nor does it through” is one of several that points necessarily infantilize. It simply refuses to the incompleteness of the conscious– the atomism of the single moment. In- unconscious dichotomy. What relational stead developmental thinking, including and systems theories suggest, however, is Daniel Stern’s version of the present mo- that both are shifting properties of rela- ment (2004), can embrace the temporal tional processes not of isolated minds or situation—the warping of personal space- even of “mentalizations” (Fonagy, 2001). time—as meanings emerge and transform (6) I believe in the uniqueness and unrepeata- themselves. bility of each human being and distin- (4) Human being is embodied spirit guish this carefully from the asocial con- (Merleau-Ponty, 1945/1962). As I often ception that my collaborators and I have say to patients and to myself—there is called the “Cartesian isolated mind.” In only one of me. My Cartesian mind does every life there is an indefinitely large not take my material body out to ride my combination of relational and implic- bicycle; rather, I go out for a ride. Nor itly relational micro and macro events. do my brain mechanisms drive me to do From this myriad, each person continu- this, even though the neuroscientists (not ally self-organizes into a personality that only their brains) may, in part, be able to can never be reduced to a formula or explain why I am able to do it. (This is category. As I have said before (Orange, not, by the way, a claim for the primacy of 2001), I inhabit my experiential world personal agency. As a phenomenologist, as it inhabits me. Most of what is won- I believe agency is one important form derful, and strange, and difficult in life of personal and relational experience and art results from this always-emergent but that receptivity and responsivity may individuality—selfness when it is mine be even more basic.) Human being is and otherness when it is yours. To claim describable in more mentalist or more that individuals are unique and can know physicalist language, but systems theories themselves by a kind of intimate familiar- encourage inclusiveness of description ity or Selbstvertrautheit (Frank, 1991) is not and resist reductionism in all its forms to return to the monism of the Cartesian (Orange, 2003a). mind. (5) Because of my perspectival realism (Or- (7) I believe that a fallibilistic attitude that ange, 1995), I see consciousness and un- holds theory lightly,and warns us never to consciousness as qualities of personal and be too sure, protects us against theoretical relational experience, primarily as depen- and clinical rigidity. As dogma, fallibilism dent on the conditions of relationality for is, as George Atwood often warns me, im- individuals and communities (Stolorow possible to hold consistently “all the way et al., 2002). Thus, consciousness and un- down” because it would itself have to be consciousness are not locations; nor do brought into question. As attitude, how- they sharply divide experience. Often it ever,it can keep us humble, unpretentious, is a question of more or less. At times, and ready to learn. depending on many forms of context, I can tell you things about myself, about It seems to me clear that intersubjective my patients, about those closest to me systems theory—especially understood as an that I seem not to know at other times. intellectual and clinical sensibility—not only Even Freud’s dynamic unconscious was accommodates but also expresses psychoan- accessible within the psychoanalytic con- alytically my philosophical beliefs outlined Orange: Intersubjective Systems Theory 243 above. Its focus is on the relational field con- being overly abstract and philosophical. Then stituted by two or more, unique, and unrepeat- I remember the words attributed to William able subjective worlds of experience. Parent and James, John Dewey, Kurt Lewin, James Clerk child, patient and analyst, worker and manager, Maxwell, and others: “There is nothing more lovers, all constitute organic psychological sys- practical than a good theory.” It seems to tems, and the individual can never be under- me that our intersubjective systems theory al- stood apart from these systems. lows me relentlessly to seek a dialogic form of Finally, intersubjective systems psychoanaly- empathic understanding with the patient, to sis suits me because it seems to include what acknowledge and explore our mutual partici- Imostvalueinotherpsychoanalytictheories pation in the psychological field we develop to- without obligating me to accept those aspects gether, and thus to create what I have called I find unacceptable. Here is a very brief sum- a “developmental second chance” for peo- mary. From Freudian psychoanalysis I treasure ple whose early and later lives have crushed the search for meaning as a way of healing and terrified them into aggressive and/or pas- troubled lives. From object relations theories sive means of self-protection. I am allowed Iamindebtedforthepriorityofrelatedness to witness their terrors and struggles and to in the formation of personal experience and support their emerging hope. This brings me for concepts such as the holding environment to my third why, the pragmatic and ethical and transitional experience. To self psychol- why. ogy I am thankful for a clinical sensibility that places empathic understanding and develop- mental thinking at the center of its process The Why of Practice and of its theory of curative efficacy. From American relational theory (Stephen Mitchell Intersubjective systems theory, above all, was my teacher for a year in my psychoan- both informs and results from my experience of alytic training) I have learned how completely daily clinical work and supervision. This aspect, inevitable is the mutual participation in the psy- however, is most difficult to articulate with- choanalytic process and how to value and em- out seeming to discredit clinicians who think brace this mutuality while also always living an and practice differently. Probably analysts and ethical asymmetry (Levinas, 1981; Aron, 1996). other psychotherapists of every school can tell For me all these gifts, and doubtless more, stories of patients untreated or mistreated by can be embraced by an intersubjective systems clinicians who think differently and who seem sensibility. to be much better treated according to an- At the same time, my systems thinking al- other approach. I try to remember that what lows me to eliminate the aspects of various psy- patients tell me of their previous treatment is choanalytic theories and practices that I find experience constituted by the intersection of most problematic. I can, for example, reject at least three subjective worlds—the patient’s, reductionism of all kinds: overly-simple theo- the previous therapist’s, and mine—but I know ries of human motivation, such as instinct the- that such stories have influenced me. I also ories, neuropsychoanalysis, and all authoritar- know that when I read and hear psychoana- ian forms of treatment based on reductionisms. lysts describing their work, I imagine myself as I can reject reifications, such as “the self,” “the their patient and thus create yet another vir- ego,” “representation,” “the mind of the other,” tual intersubjective system. Recognizing that or “the bad object,” without giving up the ex- clinical style varies with the practitioner, I have periences these ideas over concretize. Some- tried to develop a theory and sensibility that, times, of course, intersubjective systems theory golden-rule-wise, I would want as a patient can seem to make the opposite mistake—of myself. 244 Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences

With this prologue, here are three short clin- have it and if it’s something that can get ical stories that illustrate the negative shaping better.” of my clinical spirit. (3) A third patient was being treated by a candidate in training at a prestigious psy- (1) One young patient had had no previ- choanalytic institute, on the couch, sev- ous treatment but was the son of a social eral days a week. Her mother had died worker who had used diagnostic termi- of cancer when she was 11 years old, and nology and psychoanalytic jargon on her no one had told her. She had no chance children. Having filled out the psycholo- to say goodbye and only found out her gist’s questionnaire in the waiting room, mother had died when she overheard fam- he entered the consulting room for his ily members discussing funeral arrange- first session. The therapist took the papers ments. This was one in a long series of and began to read. Without once looking traumatic relational experiences that had at the prospective patient, she murmured left her anxious and cautious. After a few “Oh, this is bad ...this is really bad.” Be- months of analysis with this candidate, fore the end of the session, the psychologist this patient began to wonder how deeply offered this young man the option of work- this analyst would be able to understand ing with her or of being referred to some- her experience, and asked her whether one else. The patient, thinking at the time she too had lost a parent in childhood. that “at least this is someone who seems to The analyst steadfastly refused to answer know something,” stayed for a year. Dur- and would only engage in analysis of the ing this time, he was repeatedly treated question. She refused to consider together as a case of one thing after another, de- the possibility that her patient’s question spite his objections to the know-it-all (or in might be reasonable and deserve an an- German, Besserwisser) interpretations and swer. The patient felt that she was being predictions of the therapist. By the time treated as an instance of a rule. After some he left this treatment, his traumatized months of this impasse and in despair, she state of shock and confusion had wors- left the analysis. Now an artist, she finds ened exponentially and he felt seriously herself extremely cautious and unable to suicidal. trust her own perceptions. (2) Another younger patient came to me with complex problems: obsessions, over- All of these patients, and many others, have whelming feelings that she must harm trained me to think and practice as an inter- herself immediately, and hearing voices. subjective systems psychoanalyst. What these She found it almost impossible to trust stories have in common, in my view, is their anyone, least of all herself. I understood reductionism. Each reduces the patient to a from the beginning that I was a frighten- case of something or an instance of a theory or ing person but only gradually came to see rule. Each therapy is inadequate in a particular why. In about the sixth session, she con- way—it fails to recognize the uniqueness of the fessed, “I am so afraid you will say I am patient’s experiential world and the complex- aborderline.”“WhywouldIdothat?” ity of the influence of the so-called observer’s Iasked.“Becausethat’swhatthehospi- participation in the psychological system. tal social workers told my parents,” she In our view, there is no distinct body of responded. “And what do you think they clinical theory or of “technical” recommenda- meant by that?” I asked. “I don’t know,” tions to be derived from intersubjectivity the- she said, “but I think it’s something really ory. Rather, the intersubjective perspective in- bad, and I want to know if you think I troduces a more general characterization of Orange: Intersubjective Systems Theory 245 all psychoanalytic work from within any spe- whether automatic and rigid or reflective and cific clinical theory. Because each treatment in- flexible. These principles, often unconscious, cludes an analyst with a point of view, different are the emotional conclusions a person has kinds of intersubjective fields develop in clas- drawn from lifelong experience of the emo- sical, interpersonal, or self-psychological treat- tional environment, especially the complex mu- ments (Orange, 1995) as well as in each psy- tual connections with early caregivers. Until choanalytic pair. From a clinical point of view, these principles become available for conscious intersubjectivity is not so much a theory as it is reflection and until new emotional experience asensibility.Itisanattitudeofcontinuingsen- leads a person to envision and expect new sitivity to the inescapable interplay of observer forms of emotional connection, these old in- and observed. It assumes that instead of enter- ferences will thematize the sense of self. This ing and immersing ourselves in the experience sense of self includes convictions about the rela- of another, we join the other in the intersub- tional consequences of possible forms of being. jective space-time. Each participant in the psy- Apersonmayfeel,forexample,thatanyform choanalytic field brings an organized and or- of self-articulation or differentiation will invite ganizing emotional history to the process. This ridicule, sarcasm, exclusion, or loss. means that although the analysis is always for The identification and working through of the patient, the emotional history and psycho- these emotional organizing principles is the logical organization of patient and analyst are daily bread of ordinary clinical work. Although equally important to the understanding of any much of the childhood experience may be eas- clinical exchange. What we inquire about, or ily remembered, the full power of the shaming interpret, or leave alone depends upon who we conviction that one is defective (“the village id- are. The analytic process, as relational theorist iot”) comes to conscious awareness in dialogue Lewis Aron (1996) has explained, is mutually with an analyst or therapist who can hear and constituted but asymmetrical. One participant respond. Such a therapist’s very interest in the is primarily there as helper, healer, and inquirer. relational origins of such emotional convictions The other chiefly seeks relief from emotional tends to call them into question and to open suffering. (The Latin root of “patient” means to the possibility of experiencing oneself in other suffer, undergo, or bear. The word may also be ways. related to the Greek pathos.) In the developmen- By radical engagement, secondly, we mean tal process that we name psychoanalysis, one is the self-reflexive awareness of our own impli- primarily respondent and guide while the other cation in what we come to understand with seeks to organize and reorganize experience in the patient. Our own emotional history,clinical less painful and more creative ways. Neverthe- theories, gender, race or ethnicity, sexual orien- less, each is a full participant and contributor tation, various forms of embeddedness in larger to the process that emerges. cultural contexts, and attitudes toward differ- There are, however, chiefly three attitudes ence will be present and influential throughout that characterize our clinical work: (1) a con- the intersubjective system that we form with centration on the emotional convictions (orga- the patient. Further, our very choice of psycho- nizing principles) that pattern a person’s expe- analytic theory will be shaped by these same riential world, (2) radical engagement, that is, a factors. self-reflective awareness of the clinician’s con- Most necessary to a radical engagement stant and unavoidable participation, and (3) a in the intersubjective field, however, is the refusal to argue about reality, that is, to assume therapist or analyst’s willingness to know and an authoritarian “knowing” attitude. acknowledge deeply ingrained bias, an in- The principal components of subjectivity, dispensible aspect of a fallibilistic attitude. first of all, are the organizing principles, Hans-Georg Gadamer’s hermeneutic concept 246 Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences of dialogic understanding significantly under- call “emotional understanding.” In Gadamer’s lies my sense of the day-to-day and moment- words, to-moment process in psychoanalysis. For him any truth arises from the interplay of perspec- The person with understanding does not know and judge as one who stands apart and unaffected; but tives, each carrying its load of tradition and rather, as one united by a specific bond with the preconceptions: other, he thinks with the other and undergoes the situation with him. (1975/1991: 323). In reading a text, in wishing to understand it, what we always expect is that it will inform us of We attempt, through conversation and dia- something. A consciousness formed by the authen- tic hermeneutical attitude will be receptive to the logue, to make sense together of the experiential origins and entirely foreign features of that which world, whether of trauma, exclusion, discrim- comes to it from outside its own horizons. Yet this ination, or any other relational experience, of receptivity is not acquired with an objectivist “neu- this patient and to find how past experience is trality”: it is not possible, not necessary, and not de- organizing the expectancies for future experi- sirable that we put ourselves within brackets. The hermeneutical attitude supposes only that we self- ence. It requires a fallibilistic analyst who can consciously designate our opinions and prejudices suspend interest in “the facts,” without denying and qualify them as such, and in so doing strip them the patient’s perspective, and attend to emo- of their extreme character. In keeping to this atti- tional meanings, to create with the patient a sys- tude we grant the text the opportunity to appear as tem that supports understanding, respect, and an authentically different being and to manifest its further personal development. own truth, over and against our own preconceived notions. (Gadamer, 1975/1991: 151–152) What is needed is an ability to suspend at- tachment to the analyst’s or therapist’s perspec- Here we see several aspects of a hermeneutic tive, personal and theoretical, as automatically attitude that contribute to perspectival realism or at least somehow superior and privileged (Orange, 1995) as a psychoanalytic epistemol- in favor of the kind of listening that might ogy. First, there is the assumption that there “inform us of something.” This is a fallibilist is something under discussion. For “the text” and hermeneutic discipline at least as rigorous we may substitute the patient’s history, the pa- and demanding as the abstinence and neutral- tient’s suffering, a misunderstanding between ity of former years. It is not antirealistic or con- patient and analyst, or the heating or cooling structivist in the more radical sense (Moore, system in the analyst’s office. This something 1999) but rather requires us to acknowledge makes its own demands on the discussion and the reality of worlds of experience that differ requires us to identify and recognize our own from our own. Intersubjectivity theory simply preconceptions and thus “strip them of their reminds us that we have no privileged access extreme character.” We are thus able to rec- to reality. It gives up the search for certainty ognize our own view as a perspective so that (including diagnosis and other timelessly de- the matter itself (or in German, die Sache selbst) marcated categories) in favor of the search for can show up as other. In addition, of course, we understanding. may be able to hear our patients and colleagues To return to the three patients mentioned as having access to realities that are hidden briefly above, what guesses could I make about from us by our own perspective—this is what it why these intersubjective systems–sensibility means to be other, the “authentically different treatments seem to be going so well? Two of the being”. three have been with me for several years, and And finally, understanding that each of us each of the three has several sessions a week. has only a limited perspective, giving only Each comes from a family that could be in- partial access to truth, requires us to engage formally described as seriously disturbed. Each with the patient in a search for what I like to has suffered extremely painful and debilitating Orange: Intersubjective Systems Theory 247 psychological difficulties. What each says to me Fogel, A. (1993). Developing through Relationships. University in various ways is that “this works because you of Chicago Press, Chicago. treat me as a person and not as a case of Fonagy, P. (2001). Attachment Theory and Psychoanalysis. Other Press, New York. something, and because you don’t pretend to Frank, M. (1991). Selbstwusstsein und Selbsterkenntnis: Essays KNOW, and because you don’t hide behind Zur analytischen Philosophie der Subjektivitat¨ .P.Reclam, your professional role with me. You seem to be Stuttgart. really with me.” Now of course all this could Frank, M. (2003). Selbstgefuehl: Eine historisch-theoretische be described as idealization. I am no clinical Erkundung. Frankfurt-am-Main: Suhrkamp. saint, and with each of these patients there have Gadamer, H. (1975/1991). Truth and Method . Crossroads, New York. been misunderstandings and struggles as occur, Guntrip, H. (1969). Schizoid Phenomena, Object Rela- I imagine, in treatments conducted according tions and the Self .InternationalUniversitiesPress, to other theories too. An intersubjective sys- New York. tems clinician, however,presumes that she or he Husserl, E. (1936/1970). The Crisis of European Sciences and has participated in the making of the problem, Transcendental Phenomenology. Northwestern University Press, Evanston, IL. that the patient always has something more to Kohut, H. (1971). The Analysis of the Self .International teach me. I thus begin the exploration with Universities Press, New York. these presumptions in my background. The Levinas, E. (1969). Totality and Infinity: an Essay onExteriority. patient, unblamed and ever less shamed, then Duquesne University Press, Pittsburgh, PA. has more freedom to explore what he or she is Levinas, E. (1981). Otherwise than Being or Beyod Essence. contributing, and new understanding emerges Marinus Nijhoff, The Hague. Merleau-Ponty, M. (1945/1962). 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