Thomas Ogden's phenomenological turn

The author situates the development of Ogden's clinical theory over the past 20 years within a philosophic scheme. Ogden (1986, 1989), in using Hegel to deconstruct the Cartesian objectivist assumptions of classical psychoanalysis, goes beyond Hegel to create in Subjects of Analysis (1994) a new synthesis that is similar to aspects of Merleau‐Ponty's phenomenology of intersubjectivity. This regrounding allows for the introduction of the analyst's prereflective and sensuous experience through reverie in the cocreation of an intersubjective “third.”; The author illustrates how Ogden's solution to the problem of alterity transcends the debate over one‐person versus two‐person psychologies by producing a truly dialectical, postclassical psychoanalytic theory of intersubjectivity that is neither a one‐ nor a two‐person psychology.