Commentary on "Relativism and the Social-constructivist Paradigm"

Eric Gillett has written a stimulating article, the merit of which I wish to acknowledge while disagreeing with much of the argument. Since I am more conversant with the hermeneutic than with the social constructivist tradition, I will focus on the former in this commentary. While I think there are differences between the two philosophic positions (social constructivism being in my opinion more relativistic than hermeneutics), I think those differences can be ignored for purposes of this commentary.

I would like first to call attention to the current situation in psychoanalytic theorizing, a situation that is alluded to at the beginning of the article, but which does not in my opinion receive sufficient attention in the remainder of the article. The situation I am referring to is that of the theoretical pluralism that dominates the field. I will point out only a few of the many examples of this situation. Let me begin where Gillett begins, with the rather monumental, 300-page anniversary issue of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis, devoted to the question, “What is a psychoanalytic fact?” (1994). My reading of that issue was not, as Gillett puts it, that “[a]though many of the authors writing in this anniversary issue subscribe to standard views of science, some endorse a relativist epistemology.” My reading was rather that the preponderance of authors espoused the conclusion that there are no theory-free facts in psychoanalysis, leading me to write in another context that “[t]his 300 page issue might be considered the official announcement of the death of positivism in psychoanalysis” (1995, 330). Let me mention only the article by Schafer and a review of the entire Anniversary Edition by Cooper. Schafer (1994) notes that facts come into the psychoanalytic discussion already preconceptualized or preinterpreted by the patient and that they become psychoanalytic facts by virtue of being renarrativized by the analyst along psychoanalytic story lines. For his part Cooper concludes his review of the Anniversary Edition articles with the following statement:

Every formulation, embedded within a particular theory of psychoanalytic understanding and the technique that issues from it, repeats this process of expanding and foreclosing the observational field. In this sense, we need to remind ourselves that the attempt to understand and formulate within comparative psychoanalysis recapitulates not only the indoctrinating aspects of formulation within a given school of thought, but the analysand’s and analyst’s inevitable blind spots in every analytic process itself

(1996, 270).

A second example of the theoretical pluralism that besets the field is a pair of issues of Psychoanalytic Inquiry (1987; 1990) that address this question, both entitled “How theory shapes technique.” In each issue clinical material is presented (in one case by a traditional analyst, in the other by a self-psychologist), and commentary is offered by analysts of a variety of persuasions. What stands out in virtually all the discussions is the degree to which a commentator’s understanding of the case (and the “facts”) is colored by his or her theoretical persuasion. One of the discussants of the papers, Estelle Shane, is led to conclude: “In summary, I would say that the diversity of opinions regarding the diagnosis and dynamics of Silverman’s patient would suggest that one’s theoretical stance takes precedence over other considerations” (1987, 205). The editor of the same issue, Sydney Pulver, concludes: “Facts, per se, do not exist. The very idea of what constitutes data and is thus worth recording is determined by the analyst’s theoretical bent” (1987, 292).

Finally, let me mention the work of Roy Schafer, who has been the most thorough and articulate spokesman of a hermeneutic, narrativist position in psychoanalysis. Insisting, as in the above cited article, that events from the patient’s life are first brought in preinterpreted by the patient and then retold or renarrativized along psychoanalytic lines by the psychoanalyst, Schafer draws the inevitable conclusion that different theoretical positions will produce different versions of those events.

By these means the psychoanalyst helps his or her analysands develop multiple life-historical narratives each of which is specifically psychoanalytic. Analysts with different points of view...