This paper reinterprets the historical problem of penis envy, that is, the girl's wish to be masculine, in terms of a developmental need to identify with father. Many of the problems posed by earlier analyses of femininity can be clarified by recognizing that before the girl >turns< to the oedipal father as love object, she looks to the rapprochement father for identification. Identification is not merely an internal structure, it is a relationship in which the subject recognizes herself or himself in the other. In rapprochement, love of the father, who symbolically represents the outside world, takes the place of the practicing toddler's >love affair with the world.< This identificatory love of the father, initially noticed in boys by Freud and later authors, is often frustrated by the father's absence or inability to recognize the daughter. This frustrated longing takes the penis as its symbol of likeness. The pre-oedipal over-inclusive phase of identification with the other sex parent is not superceded by the oedipal constellation, but is integrated with it. Thus identification becomes an important basis of the love of the other: it is not so much the opposite of object love as an important precursor and ongoing constituent of it. Case material illustrates the multiple possibilities of identificatory love and use of phallic symbolism to represent them.
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.