Psychoanalysis may be seen as caught between two different trends of disenchanted modernity: rationalization, which leads to the framing of our work as a professional discipline subordinate to the dictates of instrumental rationality, and self-analysis, which frees us from the dictates of orthodoxy, inequality, and authority. But a further difficulty lies within the aspect of enlightenment, which has not only provided a greater role for our subjectivity but disguised relations of authority, conformity, and objectiflcation in our work. Psychoanalysis has objectified the other while idealizing its knowledge as objective, has paradoxically denied the very subjectivity that must serve as the source of the analyst's knowledge. However, the reaction against this condition, which may tend to produce counter-ideals of not-knowing and mutuality, must also be carefully deconstructed. Differences in the meaning given by different schools to the use of the analyst's subjectivity suggest that pluralism will make new knowledge demands on psychoanalysts. Analytic training should include the development of critical abilities that help to meet these demands within a context of education as a collaborative, democratic process. Knowledge itself can be used homeo-pathically as an antidote to the old ideal of the knowing authority.
This commentary considers Sander's contributions to our thinking about recognition, with particular emphasis on his idea of rhythmicity as a major organizing principle. The author suggests ways in which rhythmicity contributes to our apprehension of and participation in the third, that aspect of the intersubjective relationship which is cocreated and yet lawful. Both Sander's research and his contemporary reflections represent an important effort to unite our understanding of energy and information as complementary aspects of the same communication process.
The author suggests some ways in which this important paper contributes to the relational perspective on clinical work. In particular, the analyst's role in owning participation in the struggle for the position of the doer, the >bad one< is seen as crucial to shifting out of the negative symmetry in which each person feels done-to by the other. Davies's crucial identification of the dynamic whereby the child must own all of the badness for the parent helps to clarify how repetition works in the analytic dyad. Whereas the repetition may be understood in terms of the complementary relation of doer and done-to, the owning of responsibility for participation is associated with the space of thirdness, the alternative. This author sees the Davies paper as a seminal contribution to the effort to unpack the mystification that projective processes foster, that are concretized in relationship rather than merely in the individual psyche by forcing the other to bear the toxic identity while denying it in the self. Davies's work illustrates how the intersubjective third can be reestablished by the analyst's careful ownership of hatred and also makes clear that the issue is recognition of what cannot really be hidden, except by reproducing mystification in the analytic process. This author also notes that Davies has provided an important redefinition of what has often been misunderstood as disclosure.
This paper is an effort to describe and express and the tension between the observing mind and the >wisdom mind,< which has its taproots in the deep and unformulated experience of connectedness. Nominally about the process of writing as a psychoanalyst, it is more like my personal >Credo< in relation to the work of psychoanalysis, the work of writing, and the work of living with contradictions – life. In it I try to bring together disparate reflections, to illustrate in the writing itself the process of making >many into one.< Because so much of this essay relates to themes in Mannie Ghent's work, including his work on surrender and his >Credo,< it seemed to be appropriate to offer it to readers of this issue dedicated to his memory.