Intersubjectivity And Analytic Field Theory

The Philosophical Roots Of The Concept Of Intersubjectivity

To understand what intersubjectivity is, it is necessary to trace its origins back to the thought of Edmund Husserl. ¹ Only in this way can we be sure of a terrain on which a solid discourse can develop. We should also reread Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, and Ricoeur; finally, as we approach the present day, at least Edith Stein, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Karl-Otto Apel, Jürgen Habermas, Jacques Derrida, and Robert Brandom.

As might be expected, the concept of intersubjectivity is not unequivocal even in the philosophical literature—and for that matter not even in the same author or in the interpretations given by scholars. Sometimes it is used on the assumption that there are two isolated, preexisting subjects that only later interact with each other; sometimes in order to postulate the existence of a common and prereflexive dimension of the experience from which subjects emerge, but without ever completely detaching themselves from it. The second meaning is certainly the one that interests us most, as it implies a social theory of how a mind is born. Of the two sides of the coin that is individual existence, that is to say, subjectivity and intersubjectivity, the “invisible” or less visible is the latter. It is therefore the one that deserves to be investigated.

However, since it is impossible here for me to distill two centuries of the history of philosophy, I will limit myself to revisiting the dawning moment in which Husserl invented the concept. ² I will not examine Hegel’s contribution, even though the dialectic of recognition (Anerkennung) expounded in Phenomenology of the Spirit inspired Lacan (1966) in his concept of intersubjectivity, which can be summed up in the formula, coined by Rimbaud in a letter to Paul Demeny dated May 15, 1871—“I is someone else [Je est un autre]” (Rimbaud 1966, p. 305)—and then inspired T. H. Ogden (1994) to come up with the “intersubjective analytic third” and Jessica Benjamin (2004) to introduce the idea of the “third.” I will briefly mention only Merleau-Ponty, first because he radicalizes Husserl’s ideas and allows us to better understand them; second, because Madeleine and Willy Baranger, in a paper published in Spanish in 1961 but not available in English until 2008, borrowed from him their concept of “field,” which is the “link” that connects Husserl to Bion and field theory.

If I privilege Husserl, I do so not simply because he is a kind of “double” of Freud’s (Trincia 2008; Aenishanslin 2019)—they were born and lived more or less at the same time, they both attended Brentano’s courses in Vienna, and both developed a phenomenal archaeology of the subject—or because he is the father of the concept of intersubjectivity. A not unimportant reason is that, as in psychoanalysis, Husserl himself alternates between seeing intersubjectivity at times in a solipsistic, and at times in an “authentically” transindividual light. So Freud’s and Husserl’s respective ambiguities somehow illuminate each other. My point could be formulated thus: can Husserl’s theory of intersubjectivity be enlisted to support a conception of the unconscious no longer as a psychic structure encapsulated in a self or in the other but rather as something that lies inside and around us?

Husserl speaks of intersubjectivity for the first time in 1905, in The Phenomenology of Internal Time-Consciousness (1946). He then returns to the subject in his fifth Cartesian meditation of 1929 (Husserl 1950), in volumes 13, 14, and 15 of Husserliana (Husserl 1973a,b,c), the edition of his complete works, and in unpublished manuscripts from the decade 1920–1930, in particular those belonging to groups C and L. Husserl addresses intersubjectivity because he wants to solve the problem of otherness. How does the subject access the other? Or rather, how does he become himself by alienating himself in the other? If we did not admit the concrete possibility of this mutual access, it would be difficult to explain how an objective vision of the world is possible. Husserl spent his life trying to resolve this issue and produced an immense body of work. Yet he constantly swung between two different solutions, which can be summed up in the concepts of empathy and intersubjectivity (in the “specific” sense).

Initially, Husserl borrowed the concept of empathy from Theodor Lipps (1903), adapting it to his own purposes and making it the keystone of the new theory. Empathy (Einfühlung) explains how individuals resonate with each other and constitute a sphere of sociality. The mechanism is based on a principle of “apperceptive transfer,” “assimilative apperception [verähnlichende],” “analogizing transfer,” “original ‘pairing,’” “coincidence” (Husserl 1950, pp. 110–113), an interweaving between oneself and another that involves kinesis, affectivity, and sensoriality; ultimately, it is based on a form of “symbolic sympathy” (Basch 1896) or “transference” whereby the subject “metaphorizes” the other with himself, and vice versa. Thus an “original communion is created,” a “communalization” or “associative pairing,” an implicit “mutual being for one another,” an “intercommunion” [Wechselgemeinschaft]” (Husserl 1950, pp. 129–130).

But this is not convincing. In fact, if we start from the point of view that the “I” can only be such because in itself it dialectically welcomes (has already welcomed) the “not-I,” that is, if we understand this sociality as constitutive of the “I,” as its necessary substratum, then the concept of empathy cannot explain how the subject is born, because in itself it implicates an already existing subjectivity. As Heidegger (1927) cogently puts it, “‘Empathy’ does not first constitute being-with, but is first possible on its basis. . . . Insofar as Dasein is at all, it has the kind of being of being-with-one-another. Being-with-one-another cannot be understood as an accumulative result of the occurrence of multiple ‘subjects’” (pp. 121–122). And elsewhere:

the other, the “thou,” is nothing like a second “I” to whom I counterpose myself. . . . we never experience other people as some indeterminate mental “centers,” floating around in an empty “over-against-us.” We experience each other’s persona as an existence, a being-with, a being-with-one-another in a world. . . . So it is a mistake to interpret the other phenomenally as a second ego, and it is absurd to pose the problem of co-being with others in such a way that one posits the constructivist presupposition that first I am given only to myself—and then how does this solus ipse manage to reach to a thou? [Heidegger 1976, p. 197].

We must therefore think that the subject stands out against a world that (in some way, obscurely) has always been given to him and that he shares with others. Seen from this perspective, as Koo (2016) notes, subject and object, or mind and world, “are not already self-contained relata that the body ‘mediates’ as a discrete interface, but rather, dynamic poles of one unitary, experiential system that permeates our being in and toward the world” (p. 97). It is precisely in order to indicate this anonymous and reciprocal or symmetrical dimension of being that Husserl develops the concept of intersubjectivity. However, his research does not proceed in a linear manner. The point is that starting from the transcendental ego ³ (the ego that “transcends” consciousness, the formal ego that accompanies all our acts of thought), that is, from a given consciousness (an already formed subject), he is doing nothing other than conducting a static analysis of intersubjectivity. Instead, in order to overcome the aporia represented by the concept of empathy, a genetic or historical analysis would be more useful (Donohoe 2016).

Curiously, it is not that Husserl does not conduct this analysis, but that he does so mostly in unpublished manuscripts. That he should leave an essential part of his thought in a drawer is in itself surprising. Various hypotheses can be put forward to explain this. The first hypothesis, theoretical, is that it was not easy for him to question the idealistic essence of phenomenology (“a radicalization of Descartes’. . . cogito”; Bernet 2018, p. 493), not even in the fifth Cartesian meditation; the second hypothesis, this one personal, is that his scientific and political clash with Heidegger may have held him back. As we know, the former pupil and rival removed intersubjectivity from a monadic framework and gave it a strong social and “existential” flavor.

Whatever the reason may be, the vicissitudes of Husserl’s publishing history reflect the fundamental dilemma we encounter every time we talk about intersubjectivity. Which comes first: the subject or intersubjectivity? In the unfolding story of what Husserl published and did not publish, it is significant to note that he managed to go beyond the solipsistic vision of intersubjectivity starting from a reflection on the concept of time. The key problem of the genetic relationship between subjectivity and intersubjectivity is quite similar to that of time; in fact, it is the same problem. What comes first, time as a category of experience or the experience of the primary relationship that inscribes the category of time in the infant?

The problem Husserl finds himself facing is how to conceptualize time before it is consciously perceived, and thus before the “I” can really begin to exist in terms both of lived time and of time as something objective and measurable. How can this dilemma be overcome? Similar to Heidegger (1927), Husserl, introducing the concept of an original temporality (Zeitlichkeit), postulates a primary, prereflexive, pre-predicative, or pre-egological time: in essence, a “pre-being” (vor-Sein) of the subject. In fact, he goes further because, at the same time, he presupposes a pre-egological community (i.e., a community of “subjects” who are not true “subjects” because they still lack self-reflexivity).

To put it another way, the environment (the world of life, which therefore includes others) organizes itself in a “center,” or rather a plurality of centers—like loci in a dynamic field of forces—in which subjects will emerge but cannot yet be properly defined as such. An original temporality would be typical not of an already constituted subject but of a common and indistinct intersubjective area. An original sense of continuity, which with Winnicott (1960) we could call a coming-into-being, can be determined only from the outside, by the other. But again, strictly speaking, this other is to be understood not as a psychically distinct other—what could one ever distinguish oneself from if an ego is not yet there?—but itself as an element of the field, in turn part of an undivided totality (or rather, un/divided, using the slash in this case to imply that the logic in play is dialectical and not dichotomous).

This is a beginning of life not of or in the subject, but of this first activation of the ego plus the field of which it is part. This kind of experience (in reality received mostly anonymously and passively) is, however, a necessary condition—to be precise, a genetic and structural condition—for the birth of a subject. It coincides with the process whereby the subject is constituted in the body in the form of habitualities (motor, perceptual, emotional), sensitive ideas, embodied concepts (the canvas of existence), and not yet abstract concepts (the drawings and colors of existence). In the soma there are first impressions, retentions, and protensions (states of waiting), but in an impersonal and affective form. In essence, following purely logical reasoning, as a precondition for the separateness of the subject, Husserl comes rather to postulate intersubjectivity as the unity of co-being.

The kind of intersubjectivity that interests us is therefore not a concept that concerns the conscious subject, the subject that experiences himself as the luminous center of his actions and thoughts (including unconscious ones, those for which he would acknowledge “authorship” even though they are not directly accessible). Every time we use it in this way, we misunderstand its true meaning, which is to indicate the original, deep, not (clearly) divisible, and “unsigned” dimension of necessary co-being on which the subjectivity of the conscious ego is based.

For Husserl, intersubjectivity is not a concept descriptive of a directly observable reality, but a transcendental concept. It is not a suitable term to account for the child observed in the rich capacity for interaction it already possesses at birth, but one that hypothesizes what the something is upon which this capacity rests. Husserl coined the concept not to give an account of how subjects exchange things with each other, even unconsciously, but, primarily, to describe the common unconscious basis on which they became such.

We lack completely satisfactory terms to name this something. When used to conceptualize the prereflexive planes of individual being, subjectivity and intersubjectivity are equivocal terms, because in the first place both suggest difference—that which is not in common—and not identity. The “inter-ness” of the word “intersubjectivity” is spontaneously understood as an empty space. We do not picture it as a whole or space “filled” with what Merleau-Ponty (1964) calls the “flesh.” We think of it as being washed over by waves of evanescent psychic “atoms” that have this special faculty of being able to do without a medium; waves that recognize only one source and one interceptor, and that therefore reconfirm its “negative” essence. Like powerful magnets, the two or more subjects involved in the word “intersubjectivity” attract the prefix “inter” to themselves and obliterate it in its meaning of “third” or, perhaps more correctly, “medium.”

Perhaps only a metaphor can make this invisible area conceptually “visible” to us. For example, compare it with the placenta, especially the part called the “intervillous space.” The concrete interface that connects mother and fetus before birth is a true area of indistinction. The image tells us that the mobile elements are one thing and the fixed channels through which they pass are another; yet depending on how we change our perspective, they appear to us as one thing or two separate things. Then at birth another and much less “visible” placenta will take over, this time made up of rhythms and sensations. Later, like a nested Russian doll, it is itself destined to welcome the “placenta” of language. What the metaphor of the placenta does not say is that this latter is a living device that simultaneously connects all the members of a community.

Similarly, the intersubjective field is to be understood as a common structure that makes for mutually nourishing exchanges, and where at a given level and at a certain stage it would be impossible to tell to whom the elements that are part of it belong. We can think of it as composed of different functional layers: the instincts of the body-as-object, the drives of the psychic body, and, lastly, the symbolic quality of language in the strict sense of the word.

In the disconcerting manner of a game that switches between the said and the unsaid, Husserl comes to theorize that subjectivity and intersubjectivity are like the obverse and reverse of being. This is what Heidegger expresses in inventing the concept of being-there (Dasein), which is made up of a term that refers to intersubjectivity (being-/sein) and one that refers to individual subjectivity (-there/da). ⁴ The two terms live in a relationship of co-implication: they are born together and live together. This is true both at the pre-egological levels I have already mentioned and also when we find ourselves in a fully symbolic field. In a departure from what he says in his published books, in his Louvain manuscripts Husserl theorizes this dark, original, primordial common ground of subjectivity both broadly and extensively. He speaks of it in terms of the deepest level of feeling, of transcendental intersubjective community, and of original, prerational, prevoluntary and pre-egological continuity.

In his brilliant overview of Husserl’s thought, Zahavi (2001) comes to the conclusion, which I share, that in the end neither subject nor intersubjectivity can aim at genetic priority. The fact is that only subjects (or only pre-subjects) can interact or influence each other reciprocally, and vice versa the subject can emerge only from a background of intersubjectivity (or pre-intersubjectivity). But then the former cannot be assumed without the latter, or the latter without the former. The two elements at work in the process of constituting subjectivity and an intersubjective field are to be seen as constrained not by a relationship such as that between distinct entities but by a dialectical relationship—a relationship of coextensiveness and codetermination. Their intertwining cannot be undone.

But as we follow the thread of Husserl’s thought, the impression becomes clearer and clearer that all this arguing about the “originary” is only a kind of (useless?) regression toward infinity, a tautological exercise. At once several questions arise. What do we as clinicians gain from thinking of subjectivity and intersubjectivity if we bring them back to pre-subjectivity and pre-intersubjectivity, respectively? What do we achieve if we shift the terms of the question backward and explore a dimension in phylogeny that comes before words and therefore before subjectivity? What is the point of suspending the powerful explanatory value that language has in giving us an account of how it gave access to the human condition? Is such an operation so different from reducing the psychic to the physical and neurological?

And yet something is achieved.

If we make visible the elements to be found in this sphere of co-belonging, then we identify with the greatest possible precision the area where the game between identity and difference in the constitution of the psychic is played out. Especially if we think of a certain psychoanalysis that is not very comfortable in theorizing intersubjectivity, and even less so in translating it into a therapeutic technique, the “demonstration” that Husserl gives first of all to himself—in fact, it is unfinished, as it is “repressed” in his unpublished writings—of the inevitability of interpreting this concept in the sense of co-being and transcendental community is invaluable. The main value, not only for philosophy but also for psychoanalysis, of these speculations in which, in a very lucid and passionate exploration of the “originary,” Husserl forces words to say the ineffable, is that he goes so far as to deconstruct the hierarchy he himself initially subscribed to—that which saw the subject as the foundation of intersubjectivity. However, as I have pointed out, the solution he adopts is not simply to reverse the terms and to make intersubjectivity the foundation of subjectivity but, by transcending the caesura of the binary opposition, to make them dialectical terms. To repeat: it would be wrong to position intersubjectivity at the foundation of subjectivity. The reason is that, by definition, there can be no intersubjectivity without subjects, so there can be no pre-intersubjectivity without pre-subjects.

After Husserl and all those who developed his insights (especially Merleau-Ponty), it is no longer possible to think of a phylogenetic and symmetrical pre-intersubjectivity without forms of pre-subjectivity, nor of an ontogenetic and asymmetrical or structural intersubjectivity without the presence of subjects. At all events, intersubjectivity does not regard the mere interaction between subjects that would derive their legitimacy from other sources. The result is remarkable because we find the same structure of co-implication among terms that conceptualize the same essential relationship, but seen from other angles of vision, that is to say, between unconscious and conscious, infinite and finite, langue and parole, semiotic and semantic, nonverbal and verbal.

This goes to the heart of my argument, the point that I would like to propose as the basis for a tentative redefinition of intersubjectivity as a concept thinkable only in dialectical terms: in the original ego or pre-ego (Ur-Ich) lies the non-ego (Nicht-Ich), and vice versa. Ego and o/Other ⁵ both coincide and do not coincide. The possibility of this “coincidence” or “connectivity [Verbundenheit]” (Husserl 1968, p. 514) is the same as instinctual “communication [Verständigung]” (Freud 1895, p. 318) and integrative synchronization of at-one-ment (Bion 1965, 1970). The transcendental intersubjectivity lies precisely in this “interweaving” or “reversibility” of the ego and o/Other, a latent us, a deep layer of the ego, one of the Bionian versions of O (Civitarese 1919a), an “‘infinity’ of primitive egos” [eine “Unendlichkeit” von urtümlichen ego’s]” (Husserl 1973a, p. 587), the “psychotic” or “institutional” dimension of subjectivity (Bleger 1967). If this were not the case, there would be no process of subjectivation. ⁶

Individual subjectivity is formed in passivity, which cannot yet be “redeemed”—nor can it ever occur, when the moment comes, except partially—by the authority of an ego. At this point an ego is not yet instituted, except in a pre-form of successive sedimentations of mnestic traces of—to play on words—an infinite number of “at-one-[mo]ment[s], or of “proto-empathic” impressions (in the sense that they go in both tensive and anti-tensive directions, but always subordinate to the felicitous rhythm of creating order) of the o/Other. In effect, they are like grafts on the vine that determine its future identity.

A material layer in ferment, flesh that can be “affected” and that can (re)act, living substance, field of tension, irritable surface; a form of “centration” (Fraccaroli 2014, p. 142n) not to be confused with the pure ego or, if anything, with “the original absolute ego” (p. 147); a pole of irradiation absolutely devoid of awareness and will, that is, a “pole of original instincts” (Costa 2009, p. 202); a primordial flow of temporality, that is, of a pre-time, a time before time; co-being, communality, etc.—all these expressions are attempts to grasp the essential fact that long before it can constitute itself as an active and conscious agent of its own actions, and not only as active but also as unaware of itself, the ego begins to exist on the basis of the inscriptions it passively receives from the environment (but which it also immediately helps to shape with its responses). In other words, it is the result of a history that is above all biological but is then also the vessel of a cultural heritage, a network of habits or patterns of actions inscribed in the body. Before acquiring a true identity, the subject passes through a period of “impersonal” identity, in which, as proto-ego, it coincides with the non-ego or the Other of the community to which it belongs.

A developmental snapshot of this common substratum comes with the advent of the “fiction” of the ego, which is itself based on the co-birth and co-being of temporality and language (Civitarese 2019c). But the essential point to understand—I repeat—is that in a structural sense this dimension of passivity, anonymity, and reciprocal interweaving will never cease to exist, even when the ego is formed. In regarding the transcendental intersubjective community, we cannot attribute to it the characteristics of a mere sum of individualities, but rather of a functional unity, an intersubject, a collective subject endowed with its own life and its own character, “the dark core of the ego . . . the unthematizable foundation of the concrete ego’s habitualities and drives . . . the present of the self-present . . . riddled with nonpresence” (Donohoe 2016, p. 108). In the words of Husserl (1973b), it is “a layer of a general, suprapersonal consciousness . . . as if it were a unity of the person . . . a common personality, the joint personality as the ‘subject’ of the common performance . . . a connected multiplicity of people, who in their connection create a unity of consciousness (communicative unity) . . . a uniform substratum” (pp. 200–201; translation mine). Hence, not a plurality but a unity based on a plurality of individuals.

A useful image that might help us understand the nature of this “substrate” or “unity” is that of communicating vessels. The common channel that forms their base would stand for intersubjectivity, the parts that detach themselves from it would stand as separate elements for the subjects. It would be clear that there is no break between the various elements. It would be impossible at any given point to say what belongs exclusively to which part, unless by choosing to adopt one of many possible points of view. Moreover, in this same passage Husserl suggestively writes that this layer of suprapersonal personality “flows through [the singular personalities], or rather, comes out of them and yet passes through them as if they were the unity of a single person.”

A postscript to husserl: merleau-ponty’s concept of the “flesh”

After Husserl, but also thanks to him and the possibility of accessing in 1939 his immense archive of unpublished manuscripts kept in Leuven, Merleau-Ponty took research on the subject of intersubjectivity to its extreme consequences. To outline the same “thing,” the being-situated or incarnation of the subject in a field or perceptual system already always endowed with meaning and directionality, he interprets the Husserlian concept of Ineinandersein, the relationship of co-implication between subjects (being the one-inside-the-other) as the indispensable intersubjective folding of subjectivity. He cites, for example, Henri Wallon’s concept of “syncretic sociality,” “a blurring together or overlapping of self and other that is not synthetic” (Hass 2008, p. 198); he coins the terms “transcendental field,” “system self-others-world” (Merleau-Ponty 1945, p. 69), “intersensory system” (p. 137), and “intersensory world” (p. 261). In Signs (Merleau-Ponty 1960), then, he significantly asserts that every perception is but a “co-perception” (p. 72). Later, in The Visible and the Invisible (1964), he speaks of “intercorporeity” and “interanimality” (p. 172), “chiasm,” “intertwining)” (p. 117), and “intersubjective diacritical system which is the spoken tongue (la langue) in the present” (p. 175). He also takes a position against “the doctrine of contradiction, absolute negation, the either or,” asserting instead that “transcendence is identity within difference” (p. 225).

In fact, writes Merleau-Ponty, “The positive and the negative are the two ‘sides’ of a Being. . . . The experience of my own body and the experience of the other are themselves the two sides of one same Being” (p. 224). And again: “the self and the non-self are like the obverse and the reverse” (p. 160); what characterizes them is an essential reciprocity or reversibility:

the little private world of each is not juxtaposed to the world of all the others, but surrounded by it, levied off from it, and all together are a Sentient in general before a Sensible in general. . . . There is here no problem of the alter ego because it is not I who sees, not he who sees, because an anonymous visibility inhabits both of us, a vision in general, in virtue of that primordial property that belongs to the flesh, being here and now, of radiating everywhere and forever, being an individual, of being also a dimension and a universal [p. 142].

In particular, this rather obscure concept of “flesh” can be read as the nth way of highlighting intercorporeity, and therefore the interaffective semiosis, which, although “invisible,” is constitutive of subjectivity. Merleau-Ponty sees the world as the matter in relation to which relief, difference, contrast, dissonance, and divergence come to confer a sensible-sentient quality; as a system that, having this nature of “mirror phenomenon” (p. 255), flexes on itself, or rather, that “re-flexes” (“re-flects”) or “touches” and “sees” itself and from which prehuman intersubjectivity gradually emerges and then develops so as to extend into a fully human and linguistic intersubjectivity.

A detail from the astonishing painting The Magician by Remedios Varo, ⁷ in which you see a group of people wearing the same dress, illustrates what Merleau-Ponty calls the “flesh” and Nancy (1996) calls our “being singular plural.”

Intersubjectivity And The Formation Of The Psyche

For psychoanalysis, however abstract it may seem, the important gain that comes from Husserl’s theory of intersubjectivity lies in the exploration of how the psychic begins to form out of the nonpsychic. From a genetic perspective, it is useful to think that human intersubjectivity does not come from nowhere but develops from a preexisting community based on instincts, for example, from a “sexual community [Geschlechtsgemeinschaft]” (Husserl 1968, p. 514). So at this point we can see that there is a form of proto-empathy that is totally dependent on biological and automatic mechanisms (Ammaniti and Gallese 2014) and therefore unconscious. Husserl’s tenacious search for words and concepts to thematize the states of pre-subjectivity and pre-intersubjectivity, by definition ineffable, yields the tools necessary to better understand how the process of subjectivation happens this side of words: both for the species, as in the case of the original acquisition of the faculty to speak during the course of phylogeny, and, during ontogeny, for the child who at birth is faced with someone who already has a command of language; and then, finally, in the “infantile” part of the adult in the therapeutic relationship.

The process is no different from how in the original area of prehuman intersubjectivity, that is, in the materiality of connected bodies, we can imagine the formation of “centers,” functional nuclei, elementary units of “order,” pre-subjects. Likewise, the child begins to identify himself with the body and the affections that pervade him although he is not yet conscious of himself, not yet a subject. However, there is a huge difference between phylogeny and ontogeny. In the latter, language is already in the field. The child finds himself negotiating patterns of behavior that begin to structure his experience with another who is already the bearer of social values. While animal intersubjectivity is regulated by instincts, human or linguistic intersubjectivity must be learned through the establishment of new habits (Merleau-Ponty 1951). It is a type of inheritance that is not innate, but that depends on the care receved by the child in the primary relationship. That this learning takes place and how it takes place is now the result of a decision. This means that there is continuity between the prereflective states of subjectivity and subjectivity itself, but also a clear difference.

Various eventualities may arise. As illustrated in Figure 1, first of all subjectivity and intersubjectivity are like two closely interwoven components of the same entity we call existence or Dasein. Like the two poles of a magnet, they always re-form even if we break the entity into a thousand pieces. Moreover, subjectivity and intersubjectivity can be both genetic (something that has to develop for the first time in phylogenesis or in ontogenesis) and structural (a functional underlayer in individual existence). It can concern symmetrical relations, and this is the case with phylogeny (ideally all the members of a community are at the same evolutionary stage: none of them possess self-reflexivity), or asymmetrical relations, and this is the case with ontogeny (in primary relationship).

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 1.

The structure of existence (subject / being-there / Dasein)

Let us consider the latter: for Bion (1967) the child at birth has a “rudimentary consciousness” that “is not associated with an unconscious. All impressions of the self are of equal value; all are conscious. The mother’s capacity for reverie is the receptor organ for the infant’s harvest of self-sensation gained by its conscious” (p. 309). The mother therefore functions as the unconscious complement to the “all-conscious” child. Structural intersubjectivity, on the other hand, concerns the intersubjectivity that exists between subjects of a community who are all already constituted as such, that is to say, endowed with language and therefore with self-awareness: all are now “spoken” by a “human” unconscious.

Only with the advent of language can we really talk about the interweaving of subjectivity and intersubjectivity in the proper human sense. The essential co-being of a pre-subject brought back to the position that an element occupies in a dynamic system of forces extends or “doubles” in the co-being of the intersubjective system of language. So, as in intercorporeality (intersubjectivity or transcendental pre-egological community), the individual is but one point in the network of language. By its intrinsically social nature, language, which is only a more sophisticated game of identity and differences among traces (Saussure 1916), not only reveals the co-being out of which the subject is born as an individual endowed with self-reflection, but illuminates, a posteriori, the dialectic itself that presides over the constitution of transcendental pre-intersubjectivity; it exhibits the structure and functioning of the area that Husserl tries to delimit with prefixes and adjectives that refer to an abyssal archaeology of the psychic—primordial, primitive, archaic, pre-whatever states that cannot be qualified in terms of self-awareness because there is as yet no language.

In the light of Husserl’s inquiry it is easy to see that, after the material sphere, language represents a second sphere of transcendental sociality (for Heidegger [1978, p. 217], “the house of Being”), and that in the same way, if it is “transcendental,” it is beyond the possibilities of consciousness (which language has now brought into existence). But are we not talking about the same thing that psychoanalysis both discovers and invents and that it calls the “unconscious”?

In my opinion, the answer is yes. Moreover, having a clear notion of intersubjectivity at both its nonculturalized and culturalized levels helps us redefine our very concept of the unconscious: no longer private “hell” (Freud 1932 ⁸ ), but now “psychoanalytic function of personality . . . ψ” (Bion 1962, p. 89) and “infinity” ⁹ (Bion 1965, p. 46). The unconscious becomes the equivalent of the medium of water that allows fish to form shoals or the air in which birds swarm as a single body, or again the connective tissue that supports the organs of the body. It can even be seen as a “leased” function. It’s mine, but at the same time it’s not mine. The form it takes depends on me, but equally it does not depend on me—and consequently, by the same token, I cannot consider thought and action either mine or the o/Other’s alone. I cannot consider it just an o/Other, because in the act of receiving it I incarnate it, translate it for myself and on my own terms. As a subject, I myself was born only in the gap opened up by translation. ¹⁰ It is on this ground that pathology is generated. Not in itself because of the animality that exists inside human beings, but according to whether or not it is contained in forms of sense and meaning, that is to say, in human forms.

Gradients Of Intersubjectivity In Psychoanalysis

Let us now turn back to the problems of psychoanalytic theory and practice. If we take on board the extraordinary ramifications of Husserl’s concepts, it is easier to conceive the functioning of the therapeutic relationship in terms of intersubjectivity. We no longer have, except as a necessary background, the “fiction” of two juxtaposed subjects in which some objective and detached observation of one by the other would be possible. Rather, what we would have is the representation of an extremely dynamic relationship, made up of interweaving, co-being, and co-implicating. To understand and guide its evolution, we need the right tools.

Let us imagine a clinical example; but first a caveat. This is in the main a theoretical article, on the theoretical principles of analysis, not a clinical work. For accurate and sophisticated clinical examples, I refer readers to publications by various exponents of the so-called Pavia School. Instead I introduce here a fictive clinical vignette, inspired by Palinowski’s beautiful film, Ida. In fact, in the context of the present work, before presenting a fragment of true clinical work, I think it useful to propose an “exercise” in which a certain schematism is instrumental to underline some basic differences between models, on which there should be sufficient agreement. In fact, simplification concerns all the models I mention, even field theory, none excluded.

A patient, A., says: “Yesterday I met my old friend, B. She told me that a week before taking her vows she went to see her aunt. On this visit she met a boy and almost fell in love with him. But then she got scared and went back to the convent.”

From a classical angle, one might think that A. is afraid of being seduced by the analyst, or rather that she is projecting her guilty desire onto him. The analyst would have little or nothing to do with the expression in the session of A.’s unconscious fantasies. He would interpret the transference and would explain to A. that she is misunderstanding his intentions because unconsciously she sees him as a figure from her past. This would not be a case of purely intellectual understanding, as it would be based on the experience of transference neurosis; yet we would still be within the framework of a one-person psychology.

Let us now move on to a perspective that sees the theater of the psychic unconscious world as the place where the meaning of experience is generated. The analyst would think that A. is projecting an internal scene. In it she would be continuously performing a play about some archaic phases of the constitution of the psyche where desire and guilt have an important part. The analyst would refrain from emphasizing historical reality, because these are ubiquitous fantasies that in some way disregard factual events. Instead he would give importance to the interpretation of the unconscious fantasies activated in the here and now. His assumption in reading the session would be that, by externalizing such fantasies, A. is trying to get rid of painful affects, to place them in the other so as to ensure that the operation succeeds. In this model the analyst is already deeper into the relational game. He recognizes that he is, on this occasion, the receptacle for the patient’s projective identifications. He accepts that a type of unconscious and profound communication can take place in which he plays a significant role.

From a relational point of view, the analyst would attach much importance to his countertransference. In order to intuit A.’s transference, he would rely not on reason alone but also on his affective reactions. However, countertransference is the mirror image of transference and therefore it would not actually be his own creation. The analyst would also ask himself whether and how he might unconsciously be involved in determining the facts of the analysis, whether inadvertently he might not be being enlisted to join in an enactment, even for a long time, or in interactive sequences of whose sense he is not fully aware. When he manages to get to the bottom of it, the analyst interprets and uses them as the key to understanding the patient’s history from within the shared experience.

All of the above approaches are legitimate. There are, though, substantial differences between models with respect to the parameter of the analyst’s subjectivity. It seems evident to me that in passing from the former to the latter, the analyst recognizes for himself an increasing degree of personal involvement, symmetry, and reciprocity vis-à-vis the patient. In Freudian and relational models (even in their “interpersonal” version), the main tendency remains that of reconstructing the patient’s history (the identification of repressed contents). It is true that, rather than exploring the past, the Kleinian approach aims to look at the unconscious fantasies of the patient and to describe the theater of his mind. By introducing the concept of projective identification and the technique of play into child care, it comes very close to, and paves the way for, a radical intersubjective or field vision. Reconstruction of the patient’s story becomes secondary, and the primary aim is to contribute to the development of his ability to symbolize. Still, it maintains, at bottom, a one-way orientation.

In the example given above, the analyst continues to see the patient mostly as an isolated subject, even though he admits he is playing an essential role in what happens. He does not consider that virtually anything could also be seen as a phenomenon produced by the unconscious plane of “un-division” that from the theoretical point of view we have seen as belonging to the concept of the intersubjective—and that Bion (1961) would call the “proto-mental system” (p. 101). This can be fairly said whatever the object of study: whether it is only the patient and his history, the patient and his inner world, or the relationship between analyst and patient seen in terms of past history and repetition compulsion. Some elements of the patient’s narrative are assigned to reality (as if it were ever possible to suspend the process of signification that takes place in the domain that transcends consciousness), and some others are seen from the perspective of dreaming or the unconscious. I have to say that frequently I wonder what principle is employed in making such a distinction and if it is consistent or not. I may be mistaken, but it seems to me that in order not to neglect the subject (“a visible body [erscheinenden Leib]”; Husserl 1952, p. 290), the analyst risks neglecting the inter-subject, the invisible of the continuity between bodies and minds or the “intersubjektiven Leib” (see Donohoe 2016, p. 115).

So the theoretical-technical devices we would count as “intersubjective” are countertransference, projective identification, and enactment. ¹¹ However, we need to ask ourselves: In the light of what has been said so far, to what extent can they be considered “intersubjective”? The real issue underlying my rhetorical question is if and how we can finally realize the full subversive reach of the concept of the unconscious. If we want to escape once and for all from the Cartesian solipsism that Freud for the most part continued to endorse (Reis 1999), we must amend one of his famous assertions. It is not only the Ego that is not master in its own house; not even the unconscious has this power, because in turn it is decentralized in the group (or “intersubject”).

In essence, while in clinical work all psychoanalytic models use the concept of the unconscious (in actual fact, a range of different concepts of the unconscious), they do so to varying degrees. The tendency is to see the warp only when the weft shows the stretch mark of the slip, the symptom, the enactment, and not to imagine it potentially everywhere. It is like thinking that there are two subjects who only later create a field of interactions, and not that at a given level, and correlatively, there is a subject because there is an intersubject, that is to say, symmetry and indistinction. But can we avoid postulating this plane of symmetry? It would be difficult to maintain that an event x in the analysis is generated exclusively by the unconscious of one or the other. We would automatically be implying that the patient contributes more to the unconscious dimension of the relationship. In doing so, we would shatter the dynamic unity that conceptually should be attributed to the intersubjective field.

Let us consider, for example, the inflated use of the concept of countertransference. As Ogden (1994) writes, “use of the term countertransference to refer to everything the analyst thinks and feels and experiences sensorially obscures the simultaneity of the dialectic of oneness and twoness, of individual subjectivity and intersubjectivity that is the foundation of the psychoanalytic relationship” (p. 8). The unease with countertransference, and even with a certain use of projective identification, is the same as that found with empathy. They both describe how two separate subjects influence each other unconsciously, but without conceptualizing a common or indistinctive plane of intersubjective nature in the sense of transcendental intersubjectivity as described here.

The concept of enactment needs to be treated separately. In the sense I am suggesting here, it does in fact appear to be the most intersubjective concept of all. Strictly speaking, according to the principal psychoanalytic dictionaries, it theorizes the unconscious involvement of the analyst in the staging of a pattern of relations that has its origin in a split-off aspect of the patient’s personality. The fact is that analysts who draw on this concept cling to more or less traditional notions of the unconscious, regression, repression, and resistance. Transference neurosis temporarily becomes, as it were, a transference neurosis for two; even when it is admitted that an analyst’s split part of the personality may be implied in the process, in the end enactment is seen in causal connection to childhood neurosis and the patient’s traumatic history. The aim is to bring the patient to reintegrate a split-off part of his own personality, and not so much “directly” in the development of a new capacity through “psychoanalytic play” (Bion 1965). Let me repeat: of course, this can happen in a secondary way, as it were, par surcroît. Following the resolution of an enactment, the patient may well have access to a healthier way of living his emotional relationships. Nevertheless, as Gerson (2004) tellingly puts it,

the concept of a two-person or relational unconscious has been fruitfully utilized by clinical scholars, who attempted to understand therapeutic processes from the vantage point of mutually constituted and maintained forms of regulation. . . . The increasing emphasis on the reciprocal and reverberating influences of analyst and analysand upon each other has found most use in the concept of enactment. . . . Suffice it to say here that even the enactment literature contains scant reference to a jointly created unconscious; rather, the formulations offered typically involve how two distinct unconsciouses affect each other. Here in the rich field of the transference-countertransference matrix, as in the great majority of psychoanalytic scholarship, the unconscious is represented almost exclusively as a property of each individual in interaction with an other’s similarly bounded, even if responsive, unconscious [pp. 73–74; emphasis added].

The concept of enactment does not imply that a “third” is generated as a third mind (Ogden 1994). Like the Barangers’ “bastion” (2008), it is an obstacle to be removed or a resistance to be overcome. Basically, the center of gravity of the analysis resides more in the interaction between two subjects than in the field they generate. In terms of the unconscious, then, I find it unclear what status to give to what is outside the enactment. In practice, awareness of the inevitable and massive participation of the analyst in determining the “facts” of the analysis, in combination with the rhetoric of trauma, leads in many cases to the paradoxical result that the concept of intersubjectivity is used to justify a less hermeneutic and more humanistic (“psychotherapeutic”) approach to treatment.

The impression arises every time one reads accounts of sessions that record only scant traces of listening to the unconscious dimension of communication. Some facts are understood as history and that’s it. We immediately realize that ultimately we are still within the perimeter of the classical conception of transference as misunderstanding and of dreams as “distortion,” and not yet “transformation” in Bion’s sense (Civitarese 2018), and inside a “suspicious” mode of listening (Ricoeur 1965). The analogy that always comes to mind is with Ingmar Bergman’s Scenes from a Marriage. Tormented and impassioned dialogues, like a couple in crisis, but—one wonders—where has the specific quality of the unconscious in psychoanalysis been hidden? Factual trauma is confused with the narrative of trauma, as if night dreams were the same thing as dream narratives. The fact is that real trauma is one thing, while the story of trauma in the session is something else.

The postulate of mutual recognition as the basis of the process of constructing the subject is one that can be shared. However, it remains empty and vague if it does not translate into innovative clinical practice that gives it due importance, while at the same time recognizing the unconscious (intersubjective, symmetrical, common, indistinct) level of the relationship. This is why, in some cases, the use of Hegel’s “dialectic of recognition” (which in itself is an immense contribution to the theory of subjectivation, for which I have the greatest admiration) seems naive, when the accent is placed on the second half of the expression and in terms of conscious intention, empathy, and reflexive (rational) self-scrutiny. But, quite obviously, it should be read also at the “molecular” level, both at genetic stages, when subjectivity is not constituted yet and at its structural levels—as Derrida (1967) successfully does in coining the term différance to explain, according to Bernet (1993), the “flickering representation of a presence that is indefinitely deferred” (p. 143).

Analytic Field Theory And Intersubjectivity

Now let us use the parameters of Husserl’s intersubjectivity theory I have proposed and of a technique consistent with it as distinguishing factors. The current models that more easily could be included in this class are those that assume the specificity of the concept of intersubjectivity, because they focus explicitly on the area of indistinction that corresponds roughly to the concept of transcendental community—but not in the restrictive sense of the concept of enactment and of its persistent orientation toward the past. Ogden’s intersubjective analytic third and the analytic field according to the post-Bionian school come to mind. Both are consistent with a radical reading of the theory of intersubjectivity and provide corresponding innovative technical tools. Of course, there are differences between them. However, since I have insufficient space here, I will describe only the latter.

Unlike models that we can define as having “weak” intersubjectivity, analytic field theory is marked by “strong” intersubjectivity. Why? Because it is based on a radical social theory of how the mind is born; it focuses on the present relationship, that is, the here and now of the session, but not in the same way as relational models; it adopts a definition of the unconscious that sees it as a psychic apparatus for symbolization. The key idea is that the purpose of therapy is to expand this function. Again, the inspiration comes from Bion: since “Intra-group Tensions in Therapy: Their Study as a Task of the Group,” a paper written with Rickman in 1943, attention is directed at the f of the mathematical function rather than at the values assumed by x and y.

The unconscious (the psyche, the ability to think) grows every time an emotional attunement is achieved, a point of contact, a convergence of intentionality, a shared (“placental”) experience of creating meaning. Talking about emotional attunement is also a way of saying communication, passage of information, creation of order—above all on the semiotic level but then also (or simultaneously) on the semantic one. Indeed Bion puts emotion back at the center of psychoanalysis as the first (nonverbal) and jointly created form of meaning, a primordial concept or sensitive idea—no longer a phenomenon of discharging psychic energy, but a vector of shared meaning.

Through the lens of field theory, the analyst examines in a systematic way his own role as a group member in the constitution of what we can call a fact of analysis. As a basic postulate, he considers it as co-created. Indeed, if there is always intersubjectivity, then there is also always the discourse of the unconscious. Regardless of the emotional pole it assumes from time to time, whether negative or positive, it always presupposes the existence of an intersubjective or “group” area, a sort of dynamic Gestalt that cannot be reduced to the elements that are part of it if taken individually. The narrative derivatives of the waking dream thought (Ferro 2002, 2009) that are interwoven in the analytic dialogue, but also equivalent phenomena such as reveries, sensations, feelings, and forms of action representations, inform us about the state of this area. For this reason, we can say that the post-Bionian model of the analytic field is certainly the most “immersive,” at least in the sense I have given the term (Civitarese 2008).

For example, to go back to A.’s vignette, from a field point of view the analyst would hypothesize that the air is imbued with a feeling of fear. In this case, as an element/place in the analytic field, A. is seen as the spokesperson of something that originates precisely in the contribution of both and that is true for both. In principle, she is not “misunderstanding” anything, neither manipulating the analyst nor resisting; rather, she is potentially pointing out what is happening and what might limit their respective possibilities for psychic growth. Fear would be interpreted as the point of intersection (the “intervillous space” or the “channel connecting the communicating vessels”) that results from the intimacy of the therapeutic relationship; as an emerging phenomenon of a complex system; as the story of the defensive choice of reciprocal “seduction.” In this case, it indicates that a “negative” field function is active; that is, it works like a basic assumption in a group (Bion 1961).

Over time I have grown more and more convinced that what is so easy to observe in groups, that is, their functioning as a whole or a mass driven by a shared, pervasive emotional state becomes difficult—who knows why?—for us to observe in a group of two. As we know, a basic assumption and its emotional component come from the unconscious capacity of human beings to immediately enter into resonance with each other so as to share the same “mental state” starting from their reciprocal “valency” (Bion 1952). If possible, this regressive function, whose origin is initially always assigned to the “impersonal” subject of the field, should be transformed into something positive or progressive. It is only at this point, after having assumed the indistinct or “placental” origin of a given emotional function in the field, that the analyst “wakes up.” Moving from the symmetrical and anonymous plane of unconscious communication, she returns to the asymmetric and conscious plane where what is important is that she takes on her share of responsibility for the negative emotional elements that may have emerged; naturally, the positive ones are fine as they are. The stories of the analysis tell her allegorically about emotions that reflect minds either coming closer to each other or moving further apart. As we can see, the symmetrical moment of postulating an unconscious field (or group-mind) is functional to taking on this responsibility. In the vignette, the first step would be for the analyst to postulate not that “A. is afraid” or “I am afraid,” so much as the impersonal “there is fear.” In this way, using a device for psychoanalytic observation in groups, the analyst runs less risk of falling back into an objective perspective and using predetermined causal theories.

To Facebook Or To Fbi, That Is The Question

For obvious reasons of confidentiality, I now present not a complete clinical vignette but a micro-fragment of a supervision session—just one piece of a puzzle that has countless pieces. My aim is not so much to illustrate the dynamics of the analytic process as to show the “hyper-inclusive” quality of the analyst’s receptivity to the unconscious. It goes without saying that the next character in search of an author arriving on the scene would be read in the same way as an index of the change or non-change in the emotional atmosphere or basic assumption of the group-of-two of patient and analyst.

Looking at the text brought to supervision by A., anticipating with my eyes her reading aloud, in a sentence pronounced by the patient I spot two or three times the abbreviation “FB.” I read it not as the abbreviation of Facebook, but instead as FBI, the American agency for internal security. It is easy to understand how the error could have occurred: after just one typing space, the first time it appeared, FB was followed by the feminine determinative article la (“the” in Italian), so the letter l could be mistaken for a capital i, and all the more so since the font used was Helvetica. However, realizing almost immediately the slip, I read it as an instance of a transformation into hallucinosis (Civitarese 2015)—which, of course, implies the kind of extreme version of intersubjecitivty that belongs to field theory. I hypothesized that my “oversight” (in the original text svista: “vista” meaning ‘sight’, and the prefix “s” having the function of expressing absence or negation), was the fruit of the joint or group unconscious at work, as well as the thinking of the dream, which represents its most faithful emanation, and which “dreamed” not only my own, but also A.’s “oversight.” This is a point I’d like to stress. I do not consider it A.’s or my hallucinosis, but ours.

Soon, however, I realized that s-vista means “not-seeing,” “not-noticing,” “not-recognizing.” Here is why, perhaps also thanks to my having recently viewed several episodes of Homeland, that I welcomed it as a scary character (P = personage) of the analytic field: a character who, by profession, as in Henckel von Donnersmarck’s 2006 film The Lives of Others, spies and violently intrudes (A = action) into the lives of others. This could indicate the presence of an emotional climate (E = emotion) of persecution. Thus, the protagonist of the analysis-pièce is not, so to speak, “Mrs. Vista” but instead “Mrs. S-vista.”

The presence of this character, seen as an emotional hologram or basic assumption, actually evoked an absence and generated fear and suspicion, both unrecognized. At this point I could use our group of transformations (T) to bring the emotion back to the place where it belonged: the analytic field. I put in brackets the fact that it could have been possible to see “Mrs. S-vista” as coming from the patient’s past (transference), or from his inner world (unconscious fantasy), or as a pièce unconsciously acted together by A. and the patient but still attributable to a split part of the personality of the latter (enactment). Rather, I saw it as a truthful and reliable “weather report” of their way of being together. The next step was then to think what to do, if the forecast was bad, to positively modify the situation or the prevailing basic assumption of the couple at a given moment with the instrument of interpretation (I).

The passages outlined above illustrate a technique that prioritizes observation of the symmetrical/intersubjective/unconscious plane of the relationship, and tries to resist the siren song of causal explanation (Bion 1958, 1965). I have sketched them—p →a →e →t →i—to show the different moments that constitute the circular course of analytic process: five letters that rearranged can form the word pietà (Italian for “compassion”). In turn, interpretation (I) can be broken down into a series of elements that for mnemonic convenience we could render as the acronym screma (“to distinguish” in Italian): repeat in Greek chorus (C) what the patient says, provide metaphors (M) or similarities, remain silent (S), say something starting from reverie (R) or hallucinosis (A), and name emotions (E). These are mostly “unsaturated” interventions, but they may also be saturated, as the point is always to see what happens next, what new basic assumption becomes salient.

Immediately afterwards other hints recurred in the text that seemed to confirm my intuition: the father depicted with Schreberian or Kafkaesque nuances, that is, as intolerably intrusive and suffocating; intense jealousy for a friend who stole his girlfriend; the character of Othello in the Shakespearean drama; etc. So I treated the FBI character, brought by A., as a negative, as it were, waiting to be developed in the camera obscura of my (or, better, our symmetric) receptivity to the unconscious and to my asymmetric conscious role, not only as a field function, but somehow simultaneously and legitimately also as an allegorical element that could illuminate aspects of the patient’s biography or intrapsychic structure.

But in this model the perspective that is most pertinent to the analysis is the first, since it is the one that provides the analyst a reliable map with which to intuit what the patient needs and how to calm his anguish. If later, thanks also to our work in the supervision, the meeting would have taken place between A. and the patient in their analysis, we could have expected, so to speak, to find, as new narrative derivatives of the oneiric thinking of the wake, no longer “characters” like the FBI but presumably less dangerous and more “intergovernmental” agencies, for example the IRS, and then the UN, WHO, UNESCO, and so on.

Now the fact is that the “meeting” of minds also had to take place in the supervision between the new actors of this second scene derived from the original one. That’s why it would have been ingenuous to see the FBI character as hypothetically living only in the original analytic field. Like nested Russian dolls, analysis and supervision live inside each other. For me, to supervise means to listen to the material (words, affections, gestures) that lives again in the new dream of the group-of-two of supervisor and supervisee, as well as a way to negotiate in this new scene their mutual status as personae, and therefore, in our case, not only to help the colleague to get out of the nightmare she was living with her patient, but also to attain in the supervision the best possible emotional atmosphere to do this. In both cases the question was the same: To Facebook or to FBI?

From these few notes one should understand, I hope, what I mean by the hyper-inclusiveness of analytic field theory. As you can see, from this simple passage, which describes what seemed to me a happy, or at least promising, intuition (not a point of arrival, but a point of departure), which emerged as a chosen fact and as a surprise, in the new analytic field of supervision, but evidently in connection with that of A. and her patient’s analysis, specific theories, the capacity for play or dream, and receptivity to the unconscious are needed. In the absence of these elements I find it hard to imagine how on a theoretical level I could defend a series of transformations such as those I have just described; moreover, starting from a minimal detail—but regardless of dimensional scale—the method is always the same.

Only near the end of my session of supervision with A. was I again surprised to think that, after all, what the FBI does is not only to spy on the lives of others (as the STASI, the secret police of the German Democratic Republic, did) and thereby exercise political control, but also to protect citizens. So passing through a brief process of elaboration and integration, which was not only intellectual, since it involved a lively impression of an unexpected event and deep feelings with respect not only to a whole series of values and things that are part of our lives, but also to my relationship with A., I realized that a key aspect of emotional ambivalence was perhaps in play, a co-generated and shared FBspI (FBspy) function of the analytic field. It goes without saying that sensing this “truth”—as Bion puts it, the O of both the analytic and the supervision sessions—could be read as a transformation or an integrative movement that had already taken place, moving from a persecuting FBspI-STASI to a protecting-FBI; or, saying it with a pun, from STASIS (psychic stagnation) to FB (mutual recognition on Facebook) or to growth of the I (eye = vista/Ego).

Faithful to the principle that content makes sense only if it allows the development of the container, I would say that it was not so easy to suggest to A. anything of a specific technical nature, but that the help I gave her, when we discussed together all I have recounted here, was, and maybe always is, in the very process itself of trying to make sense of (“contain”) things (beta elements).

Blanchot, Green, and Bion ¹² all agree that the answer is the misfortune of the question, but we could also say that the answer is in fact already contained in the question. Psychoanalysis is the art of asking and not of answering. As Bion (1958) says, in the oedipal story the issue is not so much the sexual crime as the húbris of wanting to know the truth at any cost—beware: not the truth, but the truth “at any cost” (Civitarese 2021b).

The Problem Of Material Reality

In Bion and in analytic field theory, taking a radical position about intersubjectivity, as we have outlined it here using Husserl, has relevant consequences on technique. Not surprisingly, these are the preferred target of its critics. I do not see this paper as the best opportunity to respond to their critical remarks, but I address some of them here for another reason: because they help us see where the actual difference is in the use that is made of the concept of “field” or intersubjectivity in post-Bionian field theory. In this way, the meaning of my weak/strong distinction should become clearer.

The most frequent criticism leveled at the analytic field model is that, if the analyst focuses attention on the here and now and on the unconscious intersubjective plane of the relationship, she “mislays” the subject and his or her history. In my opinion, this view is devaluing: it would be as if I said that anyone who looks at concrete historical reality is naive, that is, if I did not simply say that there are models that deal with analytic dialogue in a more or less inclusive way with respect to the parameter of its hypothetical unconscious meaning.

The misunderstanding is to think that de-concretizing concrete reality in order to access psychic reality amounts to denying the value of common sense. It is my belief, however, that doing so is a way of effectively deconstructing it. Reality is not eliminated but only parenthesized with the aim, from a psychoanalytic angle, of bringing out from the darkness the faint lights of psychic reality. What is idiosyncratic to such criticisms is the apodictic call for commonsense evidence (in reality, pseudo-evidence)—“But history (reality, trauma . . . ) is important!”—which makes them easy to recognize at a glance.

For example, Kernberg (2011) saves the Kleinian Bion, and instead blames the theory of the analytic field for neglecting external reality: “the privileging of the ‘field’ material and interpreting it in the form of metaphorical narratives may contribute to an unrealistic, fantastic atmosphere in the sessions, and thus the function of the analyst to help the patient to think and reflect about himself or herself, rather than indulge in fantasies about his or her unconscious reality, may suffer” (p. 653). In fact, there is no loss of the real world, but rather an attempt to extend our field of investigation to better understand how this world manifests itself to us and how our inter/subjectivity is constituted. A problem would be not being able to tell what belongs to whom. But isn’t it exactly the point that, from an analytic point of view, this becomes (by convention, in a relative sense and provisionally) a non-problem, because it gives access to other levels of unconscious functioning or the constitutive intersubjectivity of individual subjectivity?

If the analyst leaves past and present concrete reality in the background, she does so in order to respect a basic tenet of her model: that virtually anything could be read as the telling of the joint dream of the session. She does not in any way erase the patient’s reality and history, but puts it in “latency” and perspective at the same time. In this way their luminosity will no longer outshine the pale figures of the unconscious. In essence, the analyst respects the text and the diegetic regime of the patient’s discourse, adopting instead a kind of binocular vision. She makes room in her mind for other possible meanings, many more than the ones she makes explicit in the conversation with the patient. In this way, she both creates a space for play with the patient and expands the capacity of the analytic field to give meaning to the patient’s experience.

A somewhat opposite criticism is that field theory would not be intersubjective at all because it represents the analyst as the one that accepts and transforms the patient’s anxieties. In fact, the confusion here is between the symmetric and asymmetric planes of relationship. Nobody would deny that it is up to the analyst consciously to take responsibility for the cure; but, precisely to do that, she needs to be acquainted as much as possible with the symmetrical layer of the relationship.

Subjectivity and self-consciousness, in the words of Habermas (2005), should be conceived as “a glove turned inside out to discern the structure of its fabric woven from the strands of intersubjectivity” (p. 14). But then, if we weave strands of intersubjectivity, not only do we not lose sight of the subject but, on the contrary, we strengthen the fabric. Here the paradoxical equation ↑identity = ↑difference applies. That is why one can legitimately ask to what extent persisting with an orientation that reconstructs the past—an orientation that can still be observed in various models that call themselves intersubjective—can fully realize the potentialities of an intersubjective approach, assuming that by “intersubjective” we mean the intersubjective transcendental community of language in both its semiotic and semantic facets, what I would conventionally bring together under the broader concept of the symbolic. ¹³ For all these reasons, reproaching the analytic field for neglecting the subject and emphasizing a presumed dimension of subject-object fusionality amounts to a failure to establish a clear articulation between subjectivity and intersubjectivity.

The field model places the shared unconscious emotion in the here and now at the center of clinical work, that is to say, that which lies in the “placenta” of the “inter.” The intersubjective weaving of individual subjectivity achieved through the moments of at-one-ment that produce the truth that nourishes the mind is the declared goal of listening at 360° to the unconscious meanings of communication. To be clear, this means that even a traumatic memory would be listened to not only, of course, as such, but also as virtually expressing a trauma taking shape in the session. The Bionian concept of at-one-ment guides us toward connecting strands of intersubjectivity, toward experiencing “happy” moments when the split is repaired and the finite self is transcended in the infinity of the Other. This produces a feeling of deep harmony between different points of view that rises above any consciousness of division. The true processual convergence of reciprocal identities in at-one-ment makes us free, not slaves.

I am not aware of any other model of psychoanalysis that expressly “prohibits” use of the past to understand the present in the way that Bion’s does, and that at the same time recommends that the analyst drift toward a mental state like that of someone about to hallucinate. There are those who regard such an energetic and paradoxical suspension of the past as scandalous (“in the state in which there is NO memory, desire, understanding” [Bion 1970, p. 129]: significantly, this is the closing line of Attention and Interpretation). It must be recognized, though, that it is consistent with the intersubjective theory of mind advocated by Bion and adopted by analytic field theory.

This principle, which some find indigestible, meets the need to temporarily deactivate our “natural” gnoseological and metaphysical prejudices. Noise is reduced so that the individual notes can be heard clearly and distinctly. This requires methodological rigor. The analysis of transcendental intersubjectivity—that is to say, the way in which intersubjectivity poses itself as a condition of possibility for the subject—can start only at the moment we methodically free ourselves from an attitude akin to that of the positive sciences. Paradoxically enough, we can “see” the subject at maximum resolution by making latent the “obverse” of the empirical subject in such a way as to access the intersubjective matrix that constitutes its “reverse.”

By the way, with the patient, even if only in a secondary sense, what is at stake is also the negotiation of the meaning of the past and present concrete facts of his life. What else would you ever talk about in a session? Far from disregarding individual subjectivity, concentrating on the intersubjective texture of the encounter is precisely the via regia that leads to its strengthening. This is what Husserl teaches us when he represents them to us as two sides of the same coin. The rank given in field theory to emotions implies a constant seeking of somato-psychic reintegration. On the other hand, those who zealously commit themselves to being empathic or to “recognizing,” on a predominantly conscious (supportive, “psychotherapeutic”) level, the other and the traumas he or she has suffered risk being inauthentic and as a result obtaining effects opposite to those being pursued.

Why is this so?

It is because, by trying to keep up with reality—but Bion (1992) calls this “supposed fact” (p. 192)—they fail to register the signals that come indirectly (unconsciously) from the field and that “in real time” qualify the sign of the present relationship; whether it is expanding or contracting, whether it is evolving toward what Ogden would call an intersubjective analytic third or toward a negative enactment-like functioning. Just as for the child in its intimate relationship with the mother, likewise there are optimal emotional conditions that promote the growth of the psyche in the therapeutic relationship. Naturally, it is not a matter of not giving the patient credit for what he or she has suffered, but this should not be done ingenuously. ¹⁴ Analysts should never stop being receptive to the discourse of the unconscious.

Intentionally validating the concrete experience of the empirical other is a necessary but not sufficient condition to claim the license of intersubjectivity. Those who pursue this approach need to demonstrate that they possess the theoretical and practical equipment that will bring to light the mutually constitutive meaning of the individual subjectivity in the unconscious interaction. The misunderstanding that afflicts much of psychoanalysis comes from taking intersubjectivity to mean the detailed investigation of the (micro-)sociality of the therapeutic relationship, but without reading it from the vantage point of a theory of transcendental intersubjectivity, that is to say, a theory that places at its center the inseparable unity of I and others, and therefore without having a clear concept of third or field.

If I consider only mere interaction, the concept that remains in the shadows is that this negotiation with the other organizes me or disorganizes me as a subject and does so reciprocally. I do not remain the same as I was before. What changes is not just the clothes I am wearing but my very being. The dynamics of the intersubjective constitution of the other and the self is always active. What is being negotiated at any given moment is not something external to my own and others’ subjectivity, but rather something that contributes continuously to its creation. The relationship between subjectivity and intersubjectivity is not, therefore, marked by an irreducible opposition, but works according to a principle of antagonistic or dialectical solidarity. As Vanzago (2014) writes, for Husserl “the true transcendental subject is intersubjectivity” (p. 105).

On the technical level—the second of the two parameters I posited for rethinking intersubjectivity—at least for field theory intersubjectivity means that no matter what we are talking about (past traumas, the present, etc.), everything is used (letting oneself be surprised, not coercively) to focus on the ongoing process of mutual recognition. It is a matter of logic: if subjectivity is always there, then the unconscious is always there . . . and can be heard. The phenomenologically effective way to de-concretize reality in order to “see” psychic reality is, in the text of the session, to parenthesize the subject of the utterance. If a patient tells me that a friend has disappointed him, I mark the D of “disappointment” as “global with color.” I see it is a possible sign of the emotional function that is active in the field in the here and now. I do not attribute the D to the patient (transference, projective identification, or enactment as “a co-constructed verbal and/or behavioral experience” activated by the “patient’s dissociated self state” [Auchincloss and Samberg 2012, p. 76]) or to myself (transference or countertransference). This is extremely helpful because it prompts me to take my share of responsibility for it. In this way I sketch out a map that can help me meet the patient’s needs. What is important is to grasp the emotional climate of the session at any given moment as virtually expressing the truth of what is happening. Emotions constantly indicate the effect that the facts of the analysis produce. This is an open, unsaturated way, through negative capability and “faith” (Civitarese 2019a), to tolerate doubt in the act of interpreting. From there the analyst can then take various directions.

In my view Bion and field theory provide true antidotes against the risk of intellectual use of theories. As a rule there has to be a moment in which the analyst uses her theories or “group of transformations” (Bion 1965, p. 4), no matter if what is at stake is a narrative, a reverie, a somatic or action reverie, a sensation, or a feeling; but the true point, then, is to see if this understanding or psychoanalytically oriented intuition goes toward emotional at-one-ment or increases distance; if it promotes “progression” or “regression,” growth of the psyche or the reverse (Civitarese 2020, 2021a). When the analyst brings back to the analytic room (i.e., to the unconscious conceived as the shared psychoanalytic function of a common or indistinct layer of the dyadic personality) facts that apparently belong only to the past, almost inevitably (1) she has a more intense emotional reaction, and (2) she is obliged to take responsibility for what is happening—not generically but in a specific way: seeing herself as unconsciously contributing to the production of the phenomenon.

If I read in the story of the nasty boss (who does exist) as also a co-created narrative, that helps me to get in touch with a nasty emotional quality that is in the air, then the question I ask myself is: how, consciously, can I do something in order to change it? If, on the contrary, the nasty boss is just there and then—is not transformed in the fictionalized “nasty boss”—or is only a patient’s projection, my own unconscious subjectivity would easily remain split from the analytic scene. One last thing: we should also remember that, as Winnicott (1949) says, “your playing together becomes the best part of the relationship between the two of you” (p. 288); but the first step for playing, even when dialogue is about painful issues, is to stay as much as possible in the fiction of the shared unconscious dreaming of the session.

In order to understand if something feels true—as I tried to show in a snippet of clinical work—it must be born each time in the very process of the cure; it must have its own evidence that is not detached from it. Interpretation should not sound like the cold application of a preestablished reading grid. Conceptualizing intersubjectivity as an “intersubjective field” places the analyst in a situation of exercising doubt in a systematic and rigorous way, because it consistently puts into crisis the phoenix that always rises from its ashes, which is the analyst’s insidious objectifying perspective. Tolerance of doubt, writes Bion (1962), is the single factor that most contributes to the development of the content/container relation. If I think I say something “true” it is easier that it is true not only for me as an analyst but also for the patient. Is not listening to virtually everything as the analytic couple’s dream a coherent form of tolerating doubt? Is it not a way of creating a safe space for play? Is it not a form of deconstructing logical-rational discourse? Is it not faithful to Freud?

Toward A Clear And Distinct Definition Of Intersubjectivity In Psychoanalysis

If I spoke earlier about “gradients” of intersubjectivity, I did so because I do not believe it would be helpful to adopt an either/or logic. My purpose in writing this article is not to compare and classify so as to exclude. Rather, I would like to stimulate a collective reflection on a concept that by general agreement lies at the heart of the contemporary paradigm of psychoanalysis. The point is always to see if we can refine the tools we use when we treat psychic suffering.

The history of a hundred years of psychoanalysis could be summed up as the attempt, each time, to give a fuller account of the analyst’s unconscious participation in the process of treatment. It is the way in which it has recognized the validity of Heisenberg’s principle of uncertainty (1958). As the analyst’s unconscious takes up more of the scene, so does the concept of intersubjectivity. The latter is imported from philosophy precisely to justify the role of the unconscious subjectivity of the analyst. This is where Husserl and Freud eventually meet—not only, ideally, in their connection to Brentano. In parallel, the role of the factual past diminishes and shifts in a ratio inversely proportional to that of the here and now. What we are witnessing is a fascinating journey toward psychic reality, an unstoppable drift from Descartes to Merleau-Ponty, from the cogito to the “flesh,” from the monadic subject to the group. Finally, Freud’s assertion (1921) that “from the very first individual psychology . . . is at the same time social psychology as well” (p. 69) finds its realization.

What I am arguing here is that field theory fully embraces the perspective of this “group psychology” (Civitarese 2021a). It sees any event or fact of the analysis as produced by a group-of-two that is engaged in symbolizing its lived experience. When I refer to the theory of the analytic field as a “strong” theory of intersubjectivity, it is not to give a moralistic or “arrogant” (Bion 1958) value judgment—even if it is legitimate, and also required of an author, to somehow explain what in her opinion could be considered an “advancement” of the discipline; otherwise why bother writing at all? Instead, I refer precisely to this aspect of hyper-inclusiveness, which for me is an asset, but, as we have seen, for others is a flaw. The terms “weak” and “strong” are therefore to be understood basically as descriptions ¹⁵ of the degree of inclusiveness a model shows with regard to what, according to our definition, is seen as “intersubjective” and what is not—similarly, for example, to the distinction between “real” and “transferential” therapeutic relationships: for some it is possible, for others not, or at least not in a dichotomous way.

In situating the main models with respect to the concept of intersubjectivity I have outlined a continuum that stretches between two poles of intersubjectivity, from weak to strong (WI↔SI), but we could also say, in a more neutral language, from less to more inclusive. On the basis of what I have said so far, I would propose labeling as radically intersubjective the models of psychoanalysis that are closest to the right side of the series. The reason is simple: to my eyes they satisfy the criteria of the conceptual grid I proposed at the beginning, and in so doing they attain to a clear and distinct definition of the concept of intersubjectivity in psychoanalysis. My conviction is that the models closest to the pole of strong intersubjectivity have developed theoretical and especially technical tools that enable us to explore the indistinct unconscious area of intersubjectivity, common and infinite, as an area of symbolization and creativity. This is why I needed to dwell so long on Husserl’s concept of intersubjectivity and to outline the extraordinary path that led him from an idealistic conception to an intersubjective one of empathy.

My belief is that in psychoanalysis the concept of intersubjectivity should serve to theorize the intrinsically dialectical nature of subjectivity, the essential dimension of a co-being that is not even limited to I-you. Totally different, though, is the concept of relationship between two subjects represented as isolated—that is why, rather than using the adjective “relational” or “bipersonal,” it would be preferable to speak of a group-of-two. If we think of the unconscious as something that is within an individual and that determines her starting from purely animal instincts, we fall into a kind of subjective idealism. It would be like saying that subject A is not also made of B (i.e., it would not be true that A = B or non-A and vice versa B = A or non-B), but each would be seen as closed off in itself (A = A ≠ B and B = B ≠ A). In actual fact, we know that the object has always been in the subject, long before being seen as separate. For psychoanalysis, postulating this relationship of co-implication between subjectivity and intersubjectivity is a relevant point, if we wish to avoid the usual ambiguities about the presumed fading of the subject and of history in models that concentrate on the here and now of the analytic session.

The essential point, then, about the concept of intersubjectivity is that it makes problematic what is obvious or even trivial in the idea of subject. Husserl’s conception of intersubjectivity as “transcendental community” gives us a chance to lay a safer foundation for our own models of intersubjectivity; that is, for theories and techniques that allow us to take as much responsibility as possible—again, not as a generic and noble wish, but as a specific way of being receptive to the unconscious—for the facts of the analysis.