The analytic third: Working with intersubjective clinical facts

In this paper, two clinical sequences are presented in an effort to describe the methods by which the analyst attempts to recognise, understand and verbally symbolise for himself and the analysand the specific nature of the moment-to-moment interplay of the analyst’s subjective experience, the subjective experience of the analysand and the intersubjectively-generated experience of the analytic pair (the experience of the analytic third). The first clinical discussion describes how the intersubjective experience created by the analytic pair becomes accessible to the analyst in part through the analyst’s experience of ‘his own’ reveries, forms of mental activity that often appear to be nothing more than narcissistic self-absorption, distractedness, compulsive rumination, daydreaming and the like. A second clinical account focuses on an instance in which the analyst’s somatic delusion, in conjunction with the analysand’s sensory experiences and body-related fantasies, served as a principal medium through which the analyst experienced and came to understand the meaning of the leading anxieties that were being (intersubjectively) generated. 160And he is not likely to know what is to be done unless he lives in what is not merely the present, but the present moment of the past, unless he is conscious, not of what is dead, but of what is already living (T. S. Eliot, 1919, p. 11). On this occasion of the celebration of the 75th anniversary of the founding of The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, I shall endeavour to address an aspect of what I understand to be ‘the present moment of the past’ of psychoanalysis. It is my belief that an important facet of this ‘present moment’ for psychoanalysis is the development of an analytic conceptualisation of the nature of the interplay of subjectivity and intersubjectivity in the analytic setting and the exploration of the implications for technique that these conceptual developments hold. In this paper, I shall present clinical material from two analyses in an effort to illustrate some of the ways in which an understanding of the interplay of subjectivity and intersubjectivity (Ogden, 1992a), (1992b) influences the practice of psychoanalysis and the way in which clinical theory is generated. As will be seen, I consider the dialectical movement of subjectivity and intersubjectivity to be a central clinical fact of psychoanalysis, which all clinical analytic thinking attempts to describe in ever more precise and generative terms. The conception of the analytic subject, as elaborated in the work of Klein and Winnicott, has led to an increasingly strong emphasis on the interdependence of subject and object in psychoanalysis (Ogden, 1992b). I believe that it is fair to say that contemporary psychoanalytic thinking is approaching a point where one can no longer simply speak of the analyst and the analysand as separate subjects who take one another as objects. The idea of the analyst as a neutral blank screen for the patient’s projections is occupying a position of steadily diminishing importance in current conceptions of the analytic process. Over the past fifty years, psychoanalysts have changed their view of their own method. It is now widely held that, instead of being about the patient’s intrapsychic dynamics, interpretation should be made about the interaction of patient and analyst at an intrapsychic level (O’Shaughnessy, 1983, p. 281). 1 My own conception of analytic intersubjectivity places central emphasis on its dialectical nature (Ogden, 1979), (1982), (1985), 161(1986), (1988), (1989). This understanding represents an elaboration and extension of Winnicott’s notion that ‘”There is no such thing as an infant” apart from the maternal provision’ (quoted in Winnicott, 1960, p. 39, fn.). I believe that, in an analytic context, there is no such thing as an analysand apart from the relationship with the analyst, and no such thing as an analyst apart from the relationship with the analysand. Winnicott’s statement is, I believe, intentionally incomplete. He assumes that it will be understood that the idea that there is no such thing as an infant is playfully hyperbolic and represents one element of a larger paradoxical statement. From another perspective (from the point of view of the other ‘pole’ of the paradox), there is obviously an infant and a mother who constitute separate physical and psychological entities. The mother—infant unity coexists in dynamic tension with the mother and infant in their separateness. Similarly, the intersubjectivity of the analyst—analysand coexists in dynamic tension with the analyst and the analysand as separate individuals with their own thoughts, feelings, sensations, corporal reality, psychological identity and so on. Neither the intersubjectivity of the mother—infant nor that of the analyst—analysand (as separate psychological entities) exists in pure form. The intersubjective and the individually subjective each create, negate and preserve the other (see Ogden, 1992b, for a discussion of the dialectic of oneness and twoness in early development and in the analytic relationship). In both the relationship of mother and infant and of analyst and analysand, the task is not to tease apart the elements constituting the relationship in an effort to determine which qualities belong to each individual participating in it; rather, from the point of view of the interdependence of subject and object, the analytic task involves an attempt to describe as fully as possible the specific nature of the experience of the interplay of individual subjectivity and intersubjectivity. In the present paper, I shall attempt to trace in some detail the vicissitudes of the experience of being simultaneously within and outside of the intersubjectivity of the analyst—analysand, which I will refer to as ‘the analytic third’. This third subjectivity, the intersubjective analytic third Green’s 1975 ‘analytic object’), is a product of a unique dialectic generated by (between) the separate subjectivities of analyst and analysand within the analytic setting. 2 162I will present portions of two analyses which highlight different aspects of the dynamic interplay of subjectivities constituting the analytic third. The first fragment of an analysis focuses on the importance of the most mundane, everyday aspects of the background workings of the mind (which appear to be entirely unrelated to the patient) in the service of recognising and addressing the transference—countertransference. The second clinical vignette provides an opportunity to consider an instance in which the analytic third was experienced by the analyst and analysand largely through the medium of somatic delusion and other forms of bodily sensations and body-related fantasies. I shall discuss the analyst’s task of using verbal symbols to speak with a voice that has lived within the intersubjective analytic third, has been changed by that experience, and is able to speak about it, in his own voice, as analyst to the analysand (who has also been a part of the experience of the third).