TY - JOUR A1 - Gerhardt, Julie A1 - Sweetnam, Annie T1 - Reply to Grotstein, Goldner, and Hamilton JF - Psychoanalytic Dialogues Vol. 11 (2001), pp. 043-092. N2 - This paper on Bollas is part 2 of a series presenting the work of three contemporary theorists whose ideas are associated with the intersubjective turn in psychoanalysis. Part 1, on Benjamin, appeared in an earlier issue of Psychoanalytic Dialogues (Vol. 10, No. 1) Part 3, on Ehrenberg, will appear in a subsequent issue. The present paper presents the work of Christopher Bollas and attempts to show how his ideas have evolved in a more intersubjective direction over time without losing touch with what is paradigmatically psychoanalytic. Although our own authorial positioning is never quite declared, as our intention was to write a representational text characterizing Bollas's thinking regarding the issue of intersubjectivity, we have come to realize the unannounced selectivity of our interpretive position or biases – biases that never quite speak their name yet, as in all unnamed/disclaimed actions, exert their influence throughout. Not surprising for a paper on the intersubjective turn. Nevertheless, it should be noted that our intent was to foreground Bollas's theorizing as related to the intersubjective turn in its own right – indeed, to get lost in the dense foliage of his rich and generous theoretical-clinical thinking, as he in turn gets lost in the underground maze of his patient's inner world. What should be stated from the outset is that the tradition of cosmopolitan humanistic learning can be heard like the overtones of a gorgeous chord throughout all of Bollas's deeply thoughtful work and illustrates the layerings of self resounding in the conscious-unconscious psyche. Indeed, Bollas serves as one of the most creative interlocutors of unconscious processes, superbly adequate to the task of sleuthing the twists and turns of the unconscious as lived out through the self's idiomatic ways of being in the world. Y1 - 2001 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Gerhardt, Julie A1 - Sweetnam, Annie T1 - Reply to Louis A. Sass JF - Psychoanalytic Dialogues Vol. 11 (2001), pp. 107-114. N2 - In this brief. Reply to Bollas's commentary on our paper about his work, the cycles of intersubjective dialogue endlessly sustaining should be apparent. We begin with an example of the form – content distinction and attempt to use it as a springboard for further disentangling some of the nuances of Bollas's intersubjective theorizing. Bollas's emphasis on form over content as a means of conceptualizing the analyst's contribution to the analytic process is indeed compelling. We all know from both sides of the couch the profoundly different meanings and messages that an analyst's mien invites: whether she's abrupt, verbose, meditative, tranquil. Yes, the medium is the message, and, thus, whether the analyst conveys a message through the effects of form that Bollas points out, such as >We have all the time you need for the nuances of unconscious figuring< versus >This is hot – we hafta figure it out now< surely does have an effect on the psychic material produced in the analytic process. We go on to add to Bollas's discussion of form by considering the particularities of form and how these too affect the analytic process. Y1 - 2001 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Gerhardt, Julie A1 - Stinson, Charles T1 - Empathy – whence and whither?. Commentary on papers by Kiersky and Beebe, Hayes, and Feiner and Kiersky JF - Psychoanalytic Dialogues Vol. 05 (1995), pp. 619-665. N2 - In poststructuralist thought, in particular ethnographically oriented studies of culture, language, action, or text, context has become an indispensable concept as a way of challenging the claims of an autonomous meaning-making subject with the corresponding depiction of the mind as an encapsulated formal representational system that can be detached from the various strata of social organization. Instead, context is recognized as providing a frame of interpretation for the production of meaning in terms of which events embedded within the frame must be understood. In psychoanalytic theorizing, the recent shift from a one-person to a two-person paradigm can similarly be characterized in terms of an appeal to context. Whereas invocations of the relevance of context in determining the patient's subjective experience in the analytically based process typically lead to a concern with the therapist's subjectivity or countertransference, thus promoting the view of the clinical process in terms of the mutually reciprocal influence of the patient and therapist, in contrast, the present paper focuses on another dimension of the context in analytically based work, namely, the particular set of the theoretical assumptions that constitute the therapist's professionally grounded preconceptions about the nature of psychological distress. It is argued that these assumptions function as >demand characteristics< in that they structure the therapist's mode of intervention and thus, ultimately, how the therapeutic work is carried out. In particular, the argument is made that these demand characteristics play a role in bringing about a self-reflexive stance on the patient's part in which one part of the self observes and reflects on other parts of the self (thoughts, feelings, fantasies, etc.) and begins to cultivate the skills of self-expression and self-formulation as the key to understanding personal distress. We refer to this self-reflexive stance as one of >analytic subjectivity< and raise the question of how such attention to the self is brought about. Then, after having characterized this aspect of the contextual frame, in the second part of this paper we go on to examine a particular event that occurs within the frame. Specifically, we examine a patient's use of the discourse marker I DON'T KNOW from the transcripts of a psychotherapy study and suggest that its use can be understood in terms of the context-driven agenda of having the patient self-inspect and self-reflect. Y1 - 1995 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Gerhardt, Julie A1 - Stinson, Charles T1 - Empathy is interpretation (and who ever said it wasn't?). Commentary on papers by Hayes, Kiersky and Beebe, and Feiner and Kiersky JF - Psychoanalytic Dialogues Vol. 05 (1995), pp. 703-727. Y1 - 1995 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Gerhardt, Julie A1 - et al., T1 - The interpretation of dreams a classic revisited JF - Psychoanalytic Dialogues Vol. 13 (2003), pp. 533-577. N2 - This is the third in a series of papers comparing the work of three contemporary theorists, each of whom is associated with the intersubjective turn in psychoanalysis: Jessica Benjamin (Gerhardt, Sweetnam, and Borton, 2000), Christopher Bollas (Gerhardt and Sweetnam 2001), and Darlene Ehrenberg. This paper describes aspects of the work of Ehrenberg and attempts to show how her trailblazing ideas of the therapeutic relationship and its nuanced particularities bear on issues in intersubjectivity theory. Ehrenberg's distinctive twist lies in her painstaking exploration of the processes of mutual influence in the ongoing therapeutic interaction and their bearing on the analytic process. The manner in which Ehrenberg attempts to integrate both interpersonal and intrapsychic perspectives and uses the interpersonal as a way of locating the intrapsychic is another focus of this inquiry. Moreover, the sense conveyed through Ehrenberg's voice – a voice both sensuous and strident, tender and provocative – in her attempt to make living, breathing contact in the moment with patients otherwise deadened to their own desire is also examined as bearing on issues associated with the intersubjective turn. While our own authorial positioning is never quite declared, our object relational biases exert their influence throughout our reading of her work, not surprising for a paper on intersubjectivity. Y1 - 2003 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Gerhardt, Julie A1 - et al., T1 - Psychosis and the other. Commentary on paper by Paul Williams JF - Psychoanalytic Dialogues Vol. 10 (2000), pp. 005-042. N2 - This paper on Benjamin is part 1 of a series presenting the wor of three contemporary theorists whose ideas are associated with the intersubjective turn in psychoanalysis. Part 2, on Bollas, and part 3, on Ehrenberg, will appear in subsequent issues of Psychoanalytic Dialogues. Although we have made a minimal attempt to critically review the different theories, we have allowed ourselves the fiction of trying to produce a representational text in which the different arguments of the different theorists are presented, more or less, in their own terms. While this version of textual production on our part may be troubling, as it obscures as much as it reveals, insofar as our own position is never quite declared, our intent is to try to minimize our own mediating voice and focus on the different theorists in their own right by giving clinical examples to demonstrate their claims. The irony, even folly, of attempting to eliminate our own presence from this series on intersubjectivity is not lost on us – and neither is our plea for special circumstances. However, given the growing interest in the intersubjective turn, in order that it not be construed as privileging the emotional authenticity of the two-person exchange, we believe it is absolutely essential to understand the theorists' self-articulated arguments and to keep alive their differences rather than to assimilate the intersubjective perspective as a unified or hegemonic approach. It is in the spirit of keeping alive these differences – itself a crucial commitment of the intersubjective approach – that our somewhat exegetical text should be understood. Y1 - 2000 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Gerhardt, Julie A1 - Borton, Leeann T1 - Posttraumatic Therapy in the Age of Neuroscience JF - Psychoanalytic Dialogues Vol. 09 (1999), pp. 531-549. Y1 - 1999 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Gerhardt, Julie T1 - Psychotic developments in a sexually abused borderline patient JF - Psychoanalytic Dialogues Vol. 10 (2000), pp. 057-063. Y1 - 2000 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Gerhardt, Julie T1 - The Countertransference Transformation of Oedipal Idealization, Mourning, and Erotic Masochism: Commentary on Paper by Jody Messler Davies JF - Psychoanalytic Dialogues Vol. 13 (2003), pp. 105-127. N2 - In Donna Orange's interesting paper, psychoanalysis is put into dialogue with philosophy as a royal road for questioning certain essentialist habits of thought as Orange asks us to consider the continued viability of certain overly freighted theoretical descriptors given recent shifts in theoretical assumptions. Instead of being viewed as neutral, timeless, culturally disembodied descriptors, our psychoanalytic lexicon is itself sociohistorically grounded in a particular tradition or assumptive context. Thus, given recent shifts in the assumptions on which psychoanalysis is grounded, the continued use of terms from a previous world view or context, without explicit reflection, is, according to Orange, at the least, problematic. The present commentary seeks to raise questions about the reasonableness of Orange's claims – including the use of reason itself as a way into this problem-space. In short, it is argued that the semantic structure of many words in a natural language lexicon derives from the fact of our embodiment – such that the controversial terms are claimed to rest on a background of prereflective, bodily based experiences that exist as echoes saturating the use of such terms. To strip our theoretical discourse of the use of the terms in question would seriously jeopardize losing the layers of sedimented meanings based on unconscious associations that echo through their continued use. Y1 - 2003 ER -