Psychotherapy as a Human Science

Psychoanalysis and Intersubjectivity: Sullivan, Fromm, Merleau-Ponty, Benjamin, and Stolorow

228 Psychoanalysis and Intersubjectivity Sullivan,Fromm,Merleau-Ponty,Benjamin, and Stolorow Our travels thus far have brought us from the early seventeenth to the mid twentieth century, covering what is commonly known as the “modern era.” The themes, thinkers, and clinicians whose work we explored were all rooted in European soil. And with the exception of Freud, a neurologist by training, those who were not philosophers were invariably psychiatrists and psychoanalysts. Not a single psychologist has come to our attention. Until now, our approach has been comparative and historical, situating thinkers in our fourfold heuristic, and whenever possible, chronological sequence. In the last two chapters, as we approach the “postmodern” era and the ideas of many living thinkers whose work is still unfolding, we will adopt a more issueoriented and thematic approach, to consider the impact of continental thought on North American psychology and psychoanalysis. Several cultural and historical trends contribute to this new climate of discussion. First, note the near disappearance of psychoanalytic psychiatry in North America in the final quarter of the twentieth century. Since the 1980s, the shift to a more biologically oriented approach in psychiatry, coupled with advances in medications and cultural and economic pressures to medicate patients has meant that relatively few analytically oriented psychiatrists are still in practice today. The Sullivan, Fromm, Merleau-Ponty, Benjamin, and Stolorow 229 pervasive bureaucratization of mental health has similarly encroached on the practice of psychoanalysis. Second, existential psychiatry, a once powerful and protean force, has become a marginal voice in the mental health field since the mid-1970s, at least in North America. With rare exceptions like Irving Yalom, who still commands a wide and attentive audience outside of psychiatry, few psychiatrists identify themselves with the existential-phenomenological tradition. The concurrent declines of psychoanalytic and existential psychiatry have a common cause — the resurgence of neo-Kräpelinian, biologically based psychiatry, which mandates drug-based approaches to treatment and discourages so-called “talk therapy.” As a result of this trend, newly minted psychiatrists in North America often have little training in psychotherapy. Psychiatry has slowly ceded the practice of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy to psychologists, social workers, and counselors, and in the process continental philosophy has had an increasing impact on psychology and social work in the last three decades. Nowhere has the impact of continental philosophy on psychological theory and practice been more obvious than in the discussion of intersubjectivity, defined most broadly as the relationship between self and other. In this chapter we will be concerned with the ways in which the metatheoretical notion of intersubjectivity has been understood philosophically and applied clinically by Harry Stack Sullivan, Erich Fromm, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jessica Benjamin, and Robert Stolorow and his colleagues . Of this group of clinicians, Merleau-Ponty is the only philosopher , though his writing and seminars as a professor of child psychology and pedagogy at the Sorbonne directly address clinical concerns. Indeed, Sullivan, Fromm, Benjamin, and Stolorow all identify themselves as psychoanalysts, which requires some explanation, as throughout our discussion we have chiefly employed the term “psychotherapy.” As a result of revisionist forms of psychoanalysis, particularly interpersonal , relational, and intersubjective approaches, traditional distinctions between psychoanalysis and psychotherapy have given way to the possibility of integrating clinical theories and techniques. This dispersion points toward a broadening of psychoanalysis. It suggests 230 Psychoanalysis and Intersubjectivity that psychoanalysis is not a monolithic Freudian entity and cannot be owned or appropriated by an exclusive set of ideas and beliefs. All too often psychoanalysts are lumped together by their critics under the rubric of classical Freudianism. In fact, contemporary psychoanalysis has moved well beyond Freud so that revisionist forms of psychoanalysis have much in common with contemporary existential and humanistic psychotherapy. Not surprisingly, perhaps, the influence of continental philosophy is equally evident in the work of James Bugenthal, Tom Greening, Mike Arons, Ilene Serlin, Kirk Schneider, and others, who seek to fuse (European) existential psychotherapy with (American) humanistic psychology. And despite Jung’s sometimes disparaging remarks about Hegel and Heidegger, since the 1980s Jungian analytic psychology has taking continental thought to heart, as evidenced in the publications of James Hillman, Robert Romanyshyn, Stan Marlan, Roger Brooke, and others. Thus, although there has been a profound decline in the influence of continental philosophy in psychiatry, in other mental health professions the impact of continental thinking is both deeper and more diffuse, intermingling with other indigenous influences, including...