In this wide-ranging study of subjectivity and intersubjectivity, Roger Frie develops a critical account of recent conceptions of the subject in philosophy and pdychoanalytic theory. Using a line of analysis strongly grounded in the European tradition, Frie examines the complex relationship between the theories of subjectivity, intersubjectivity, language and love in the work of a diverse body of philosophers and psychoanalyists. He provides lucid interpretations of the work of Sartre, Binswanger, Lacan, Habermas, Heidegger, Freud and others. Because it integrates perspectives (...) from continental philosophy, analytical philosophy, and psychoanalytic theory, this book will appeal to a wide audience in the areas of philosophy, history of philosophy, psychoanalysis, and social theory. (shrink)

Understanding Experience: Psychotherapy and Postmodernism is a collection of innovative interdisciplinary essays that explore the way we experience and interact with each other and the world around us. The authors address the postmodern debate in psychotherapy and psychoanalysis through clinical and theoretical discussion and offer a view of the person that is unique and relevant today. The clinical work of Binswanger, Boss, Fromm, Fromm-Reichmann, Laing, and Lacan is considered alongside the theories of Buber, Heidegger, Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Sartre and others. Combining (...) clinical data from psychotherapy and psychoanalysis with insights from European philosophy, this book seeks to fill a major gap in the debate over postmodernism and bridges the paradigmatic divide between the behavioural sciences and the human sciences. It will be of great interest to clinicians and students of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis who wish to come to terms with postmodernism, as well as those interested in theinteraction of psychoanalysis, philosophy and social theory. experience. (shrink)

The concept of multiplicity describes the fluid nature of identity and experience in the wake of postmodernity. Yet the question of how we negotiate and maintain our identities, despite our multiplicities, requires phenomenological clarification. I suggest that recognition of multiplicity needs to be combined with an acknowledgement of continuity, however minimal. I maintain that this continuity is evidenced in our pre-reflective self-awareness, embodiment and habitual activities. Our authorship of life narratives and our ability to deliberate and shape our identities takes (...) place against the background of our lived, prereflective experience. I develop the notion of prereflective self-awareness using the work of Sartre, Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty. I suggest that prereflective self-awareness, embodiment and habitual activity are themselves shaped by our participation in sociocultural frameworks that give meaning to our lives. (shrink)

The interpretive turn in psychology is strongly indebted to the hermeneutic philosophies of Martin Heidegger and Hans-Georg Gadamer. What is less known is the degree to which the interpretive turn is already initiated in the 1920s by the Swiss psychiatrist, Ludwig Binswanger . For Binswanger, the objective of psychology and psychopathology is to understand how the person exists and relates to others in the world—and this can only be achieved through a situated understanding of the person in his or her (...) life-world. Binswanger is one of the first to recognize and work out the contributions of Husserl's and Heidegger's philosophies for psychology. Using an approach that combines elements from phenomenology, hermeneutics and dialogical philosophy, Binswanger views the person not as an object, but as fundamentally immersed in a world of human relating. Yet Binswanger is not a Heideggerian, and does not identify his work as existential. Instead, he develops a dialogical perspective on human experience that parallels important aspects of Gadamer's hermeneutics. Drawing chiefly on untranslated texts, I maintain that Binswanger's hermeneutics of exploration forms an important, if relatively unknown chapter of the interpretive turn in psychology. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

First Published in 2009. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

In contemporary forms of psychoanalysis, particularly intersubjective systems theory, the turn towards contextualism has permitted the development of new ways of thinking and practicing that have dispensed with the notion of isolated individuality. For many who embrace this "post-subjectivist" way of thinking and practicing, the recognition that all human experience is fundamentally immersed in the world makes the question of individuality seem confusing, even anachronistic. Yet the challenge of individuality remains an important and pressing issue for contemporary theory and practice; (...) many clinicians are left to wonder about the role of "individual" experience and how to approach it conceptually or clinically. This volume of original essays gives the problem of individuality its due, without losing sight of the importance of contextualized experience. Drawing on a variety of disciplinary backgrounds - philosophical, developmental, biological, and neuroscientific - the contributors address the tension that exists between individuality and the emergence of contextualism as a dominant mode of psychoanalytic theory and practice, thereby providing unique insights into the role and place of individuality both in and out of the clinical setting. Ultimately, these essays demonstrate that individuality, no matter how it may be defined, always occurs within a contextual web that forms the basis of human experience. _Contributors:_ William J. Coburn, Philip Cushman, James L. Fosshage, Roger Frie, Frank M. Lachmann, Jack Martin, Donna Orange, Robert D. Stolorow, Jeff Sugarman. (shrink)

This article examines and elaborates the nature of subjective experience by drawing on a variety of perspectives in recent philosophy, psychology, and psychoanalysis. The question of subjectivity has been much debated in each of these disciplines. In contrast with postmodern thinkers who wish to discard subjectivity altogether, I discuss alternative ways to understand and conceptualize subjectivity, or self-consciousness. I consider a tradition of thinkers that includes Sartre, Fichte, and the early German Romantics, who conceptualize self-consciousness as a "being-familiar-with-oneself" that is (...) prior to all reflection. I argue that a developmental corollary to this approach can be found in the psychological research of Daniel Stern, who attributes to infants a "simple non-self-reflexive awareness," while Jacques Lacan's discussion of the specular misrecognitions of the self complicates any simply rendering of "mirroring." By thus combining epistemological, developmental, and phenomenological treatments of the self, I believe it is possible to achieve a conception of subjectivity that avoids the snares of Cartesian essentialism. (shrink)