Atwood and Stolorow have defined intersubjectivity theory as:

. . . a field theory or systems theory in that it seeks to comprehend psychological phenomena, not as products of isolated intrapsychic mechanisms, but as forming at the interface of reciprocally interacting subjectivities. Psychological phenomena...cannot be understood apart from the intersubjective contexts in which they take form (Stolorow and Atwood, 1992).

The difference between Stolorow's Intersubjectivity and Yontef's (and Perls') field theory is that Stolorow is concerning himself solely with psychological development and the therapeutic relationship, whereas the Gestaltists are dealing with all events, including the psychological. As Yontef puts it,

Field theory looks at all events as a function of the relationship of multiple interacting forces [which] form a field in which every part of the field affects the whole and the whole affects all parts of the field. No event occurs in isolation. . (Yontef, 2001, p. 4).

The point of view of all these theorists is that in psychotherapy there is no objective reality, known by the therapist but unknown by the client, and that the two participants co-create the reality of the therapy and their relationship. This has many ramifications for how the therapist deals with the client and the material evoked in the therapeutic situation. There is a much more egalitarian relationship, the chances for empathic failures are fewer and, when occurring, are much more easily dealt with by the therapist looking within to find out what his or her part was in the therapeutic derailments or impasses. The therapist should also see himself or herself as helping to co-create the positive, growthful events in therapy.

Stolorow, Orange and Atwood contrast their concept of intersubjectivity with the definitions of Stern (1985) , Benjamin (1995) and Ogden (1994). For the former, it's not just the ability to recognize the other person as a separate subject (Stern) nor as a reflection of one's consciousness in the consciousness of another (mutual recognition, (Benjamin), nor unconscious nonverbal affective communication (Ogden). In an earlier work, they say, "For us an intersubjective field--any system constituted by interacting experiential worlds--is neither a mode of experiencing nor a sharing of experience. It is the contextual precondition for having any experience at all (Orange et. al., 1997).

Another area of agreement between Intersubjectivity and relational Gestalt theory is in their discussion of present-moment thinking. The way in which Stolorow, Orange and Atwood characterize Gill (1982) and Mitchell (1988) makes the latter sound like 60's gestaltists in wanting to pay attention in therapy only to the present (figural) moment, , thereby neglecting the background (ground) of each participant. Stolorow et. al. say, "Ontologically, we regard the past and the future as inevitably implicated in all present moments "( p. 5). Gestalt therapy used to be known popularly as strictly a present-centered therapy but, as Polster (1984) and Yontef (1993) have pointed out, gestalt therapy deals not only with what is the figural present, but also ground, which includes the individual's past history and future goals, as they function to form the present figure.

Stolorow, Orange and Atwood also discuss some of the ideas of Harry Stack Sullivan, whom the relational analysts cite as a forerunner of relational analysts. They are critical specifically of Sullivan's notion of parataxic distortion. I'm not sure whether the relational analysts are necessarily wedded to this concept. It seems that they are more wedded to Sullivan's general view of relationships determining human development rather than the Freudian view of an unfolding biological process. I'm rather mystified by their singling out this particular concept. Indeed, in looking through the material I have on Sullivan, I developed a renewed appreciation of his field theoretical viewpoints. For example, he says things such as the individual is part and a reflection of a larger whole and is inconceivable outside of a social matrix. The separation of a "personality" from its network of interpersonal configuration is merely a verbal trick, an art of "perverted ingenuity" (1930). Granted, Sullivan was not theoretically consistent in his field theoretical perspective, but he was much farther along in that direction than most other theorists of his time.

Stolorow, Orange and Atwood's criticisms of projective identification are very well taken, for the very existence of the concept has reinforced the tendency of some therapists ito avoid delving within and taking responsibility for their own affective reactions toward patients when there have been ruptures in the therapeutic alliance.

Their criticism of Fairbairn, however, points to one objection I've long had toward Intersubjectivists: their rejection of the existence of sub-selves. They say, in criticizing Fairborn,

...in Fairbairn's theoretical vision the endopsychic world, once established, is pictured as operating as a closed system, a Cartesian container housing an array of internalized personages. The internalized object relations are seen as dynamically active structures that behave at times like drives, at times like demons--autonomously and with a life of their own. . .Fairbairn reverted to an image of the isolated mind, a mind whose dynamisms are insulated from the constitutive impact of the surround. (pp. 3-4).

If these theorists have read Fritz Perls, Eric Berne and Watkins and Watkins (1997), I would imagine they have the same criticisms of the concepts of Topdog and Underdog, Parent/Child/Adult and Ego States.

Now, granted, people don't have little entities running around in their brains. But most people I have encountered in psychotherapy experience a phenomenological reality of separate sub-selves. And in those with dissociative identity disorders, they do operate as "a [relatively] closed system. . .housing an array of internalized images."

In my experience, the only effective way to work with these clients is to accept the client's phenomenological reality and create a safe, non-threatening environment, invite the sub-personalities to come forth and communicate with me and eventually with each other.

I use a variety of techniques with such people: interviewing the different ego states, having them dialogue with each other, even helping to create, via the use of EMDR, a sub-self that is potentially available to them but not currently operant. This might be a nurturing sub-self, an objective-observer sub-self or a grounding sub-self.

If I completely accepted Stolorow and his colleagues' theoretical point of view, I would never attempt to do this work. And if a client began to talk, for example, about the abused little girl inside of her and I refused to accept her subjective reality of a sequestered little girl that is relatively cut-off from contact with others, she would probably feel rejected and shamed, thereby replicating past abuse.

It is frequently quite easy to know when a client has shifted out of identification with one sub-self and into identifying with another: There is a change in voice tone, in affect, in body posture, in verbal content and in degree of assertiveness in relating to the therapist. With the rapid advances in our knowledge about brain functioning, I suspect that we will soon see that different parts of the brain or at least different neural networks are activated when the different sub-selves are figural. Our ultimate goal as therapists is to help these dissociated parts to coalesce or at least communicate and cooperate with each other and the world.

I doubt that even Fairbairn would have maintained that the inner world of sub-selves is a completely closed system. If that were the case, growth in psychotherapy would not be possible. Some sub-selves are almost completely closed off to contacting others, and it's only with a great deal of therapeutic skill and patience, and usually long-term therapy, that some of these sub-selves begin to reveal themselves to the therapist.

I also think that our very language makes it difficult to theorize and even conceptualize in a purely intersubjective manner, which is what Stolorow and his colleagues seem to be aiming toward. Perhaps this is why they spend much time in their writings criticizing other writers and discussing their own theory in abstract terms, but seldom discussing, to my knowledge, how they function intersubjectively in the clinical situation. I am also not aware of how they would conceptualize and work therapeutically with someone with a dissociative disorder. I borrowed their most recent book, entitled Working Intersubjectively: Contextualism in Psychoanalytic Practice (Orange, Atwood and Stolorow, 1997) to see if they discuss how they work with dissociated aspects of the individual. Toward the end of the book there is a section entitled "Thinking Contextually about Dissociation and Multiplicity," in which they discuss their theory of dissociation, but I fail to see how they would actually work with those with dissociative disorders. Perhaps they resist giving technical guidelines for working with clients because each client-therapist dyad is a unique intersubjective system and discussion of one such system would not be applicable to any other system. I do believe, however, that certain general trends could be discussed; for example, how certain types of therapist organizing principles can make it difficult for them to understand clients with differing organizing principles, such as a native-born American therapist working with a client from a different country. They do some of this in an earlier work (Atwood and Stolorow, 1984) when they describe the difficulties a therapist had with a client who had different organizing principles around anger. The client had been taught, when growing up, that her anger was very dangerous and would destroy others and result in their loss. The therapist also had difficulties during developmental years with anger, coming to believe that if she became hostile toward others, they would reject and hate her. The therapist kept reassuring the client that she would accept the client's expressions of anger toward her, which the client then interpreted as encouragement to destroy the therapist! It was only when the therapist was able to decenter from her viewpoint that the therapy resumed its positive direction.

Needless to say, it takes a great deal of self-awareness for a therapist to function intersubjectively and he or she will be able to do that with greater or lesser success depending on many factors: the character structure, organizing principles, degree of disturbance, etc. of the client; and the organizing principles, degree of self-awareness, etc. of the therapist.

I also believe Stolorow, Orange and Atwood underestimate the huge problem people from Western cultures have in trying to function in an intersubjective fashion. Part of the reason is that we use a language which makes a subject-object split inherent in our way of thinking and connecting to our surround. We separate ourselves from our actions and from the environment linguistically and, inevitably, in our consciousness.

There are cultures, however, who haven't made this separation. For example, a tribe of Indians that used to live in northern California, the Wintu, did not have a conception of the self as ". . .strictly delimited or defined, but as a concentration, at most, which gradually fades and gives place to the other" (Lee, 1959). The self had no strict boundary, was not even named and, Lee believed, not even recognized as a separate entity. Even when giving a name to the self or another person, they tended to use a different signifier depending on the context in which or with whom the person appeared. But it is impossible, I think, for us to really experience this way of being in the world because of the way our very language has shaped our consciousness from early childhood. The experiencing of reality of the Wintus is, to me, real intersubjectivity, perhaps only achieved in Western culture by a long-time meditator who is able to dissolve the boundaries between self and other.

Stolorow, Orange and Atwood touch on the psychological as opposed to theoretical difficulties when they say,

Without reified mental entities, without decontextualized absolutes or universals, and without objectivity and its God's-eye view, we are left with no metapsychological or epistemological bedrock to stand on, and the resulting anxiety can be enormous. In order not to retreat back into the reasuring illusions of Cartesianism, we must find ways to embrace the painful vulnerability inherent in what we have called "the unbearable embeddedness of being" (Stolorow and Atwood, 1992, p. 22). (p. 12).

Precisely. Is it too much to ask that they give us some ideas about how we can do that?

References

Stolorow, R.D., Orange, D.M. & Atwood, G.E. (2001) Cartesian and post-cartesian trends in relational psychoanalysis. Psychoanalytic Psychology, Vol 18, No. 3, 468-484.