In. Replying to the commentaries by Margaret Crastnopol (2001), Dodi Goldman (2001), and Stephen A. Mitchell (2001), I address the relationship of modernism to postmodernism, with emphasis on the possible conflicts between therapeutic effectiveness and the postmodern view of experience in general, and core affect in particular, as culturally constructed. I elaborate on the claim I made in >Analyzing Multiplicity< (Fairfield, 2001) that developmental schemas, however central to psychoanalysis at the present time, are vulnerable theoretically. Difficulties in bringing terms such as agency and authenticity into a postmodern paradigm are considered. In discussing some common misunderstandings of the critical approach known as deconstruction, I emphasize its ethical import and its kinship to psychoanalytic theory and practice. Special attention is paid to deconstructing the binary categorization American/not-American and to exploring the distinctively American origins of some current models of subjectivity.
Reply to Panel Questions
(2001)
Tensions between modernism and postmodernism in psychoanalytic theory and practice are evident in the allegedly >postmodern< view of subjectivity as not unified but plural. Suggesting that a thoroughgoing postmodern clinical practice does not exist at present, I distinguish between U. S. and European models of the postmodern multiple subject and between modern and postmodern varieties of pluralism in the current psychoanalytic theorization of subjectivity in this country, proposing that all such pluralist theories are in fact mixed models. I argue that these theories do not reflect objective, essential traits of selfhood but are complexly shaped by the cultural presuppositions and intrapsychic needs of the analyst hence attempts to theorize subjectivity with reference to science (including developmental schemas) are problematic. Because a thoroughgoing postmodern pluralism cannot accommodate such concepts as agency and authenticity or a coherent narrative of the treatment process, clinical psychoanalysis, at least at present, inevitably includes major elements of the modernist approach, in which subjectivity is seen as unified. At this time of paradigm shift between modernism and postmodernism, therefore, it is important that pluralists decenter from their theories and respect the continuing influence of modernism on psychoanalytic theory and practice.