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This article examines a debate concerning the exegesis of the story of the garden of Eden and the tree of knowledge, as told in Genesis. Two contradictory interpretations of the garden narrative are examined, the first as the story is elucidated by the psychoanalyst and social theorist Erich Fromm and the alternative interpretation by the Talmudic scholar and philosopher Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik. This article compares and contrasts their exegeses and the respective implications of each view. The controversy, which has profound implications, reflects differences in world views concerning the good life, autonomy and relatedness, assertion and submission, will and surrender, obedience and rebellion, independence and interdependence, subjectivity and intersubjectivity. Links are drawn to a variety of contemporary psychoanalytic theories, developments, and controversies.
In this commentary on Arnold Rothstein's >Compromise Formation Theory: An Intersubjective Dimension,< I address some of the limitations of compromise formation theory in addressing issues of intersubjectivity. Namely, compromise formation theory does not address intersubjectivity as a principal motivation it takes up mutual regulation but not mutual recognition or other aspects of intersubjectivity it does not place the intersubjective matrix at the center of clinical psychoanalytic understanding and it does not sufficiently examine clinical concerns regarding the patient's conflicts regarding intersubjective contact with the analyst. I then discuss Rothstein's clinical vignette in an effort to provide an alternative understanding of the therapeutic action of Rothstein's clinical interventions. Drawing on the work of the late Lloyd Silverman, I present an intersubjective explanation that highlights the analyst's compassionate understanding of the patient's conflicts and acceptance of the pleasure in the patient's impulses, achieved through the analyst's own personal and subjective struggles.