Relational but not intersubjective?

Shelly Doctors, PhD, promoter of Self Psychology and of one of its daughters, Intersubjective Systems Theory, wrote a brief paper on Self Psychology’s “Earning a Seat at the Table (Again),”  which reminds us how Kohut’s paradigm shift from intrapsychic conflict to the importance of environmental surround was rejected by mainstream psychoanalysis of its day. Now Doctors notes a second struggle for Self Psychology: being accepted at the relational table. [She does not mention how earlier relational theorists, such as Ferenczi or Bowlby -- with his ideas on attachment and the importance of the environmental surround-- were also denied for decades ‘a seat at the table.’  Winnicott, also an early relational theorist, is likewise not mentioned (perhaps following in Kohut’s footsteps of not mentioning earlier theorists upon whom Kohut may have built his ideas), though Winnicott, wisely using classical language for his revolutionary ideas, was more palatable to his traditional peers.] Doctors also notes the irony of Self Psychology, having once been too relational, is now seemingly not relational enough.

Championing Kohut’s ‘selfobject’ as a unique contribution to psychoanalytic thought and as evidence of Self Psychology’s relationality, Doctors does not go further to discuss how ‘selfobject’ is not intersubjective. The selfobject experience is to the subject any person, thing, or idea which leads to an increased sense of self as cohesive, coherent,and continuous. The trouble is that it sees the other as a function and not as a subject in her or his own right. So while Self Psychology is relational in that it recognizes the importance of the human surround, it is not necessarily intersubjective when it emphasizes one of its greatest achievements to be the ‘selfobject’ concept.

Benjamin, on the other hand, sees intersubjectivity as a goal, if you will, or outcome of the psychoanalytic process, the precariously held capacity to both be a subject oneself and recognize the subjectivity of the other. Not only is this tension of subject-to-subject relating hard to sustain for any length of time, but may only be achieved in a particular self state and not other self states (or affective states), and only by that self state in a particular moment. Go figure.