Panel on Philosophical Considerations in Psychoanalysis:
Five Points of Interplay Between Intersubjective-Systems Theory and Heidegger's Existential Philosophy, and the Clinical Attitudes They Foster

In recent years, Robert Stolorow (e.g., 2007; 2010, 2011) has cultivated mutually enriching interplay between psychoanalysis, on one hand, and philosophical perspectives on the individual human being and his existential context, on the other. In particular, he has explored interplay between certain substantive and methodological features of Intersubjective-Systems Theory, his and his collaborators' relational psychoanalytic framework, and Heidegger's (1927) existential philosophy, or ontology of human being. In my 2011 IAPSP conference presentation I discussed five points of this interplay with Heidegger, as well as the existential attitudes that they cultivate in the relational psychoanalytic thinker and clinician.

1. The central point of interplay is a substantive one grounded in the crucial role that each of Intersubjective-Systems Theory and Heidegger's existential philosophy ascribes to emotion --whether in the formation and contents of subjective worlds, as is the concern of psychoanalysis, or in being-in-the-world, as is the ontological concern of Heidegger's existential philosophy. In Intersubjective-Systems Theory, it is lived affective and perceptual experience in the developmental system that gives form to a person's central emotional convictions, or organizing principles. These then subsequently structure the horizons and contents of the person's emotional world, including configurations of affect and perception, like those of selfhood, otherhood and worldhood, and what can and cannot be spoken and seen of them.

In analogous fashion, Heidegger --as existential philosopher-- grants a central role to affectivity in the human being's access to and experience of his being. Affectivity emerges as the primordial avenue through which "Being-in-the-world" --that is, the human kind of being-- is disclosed to itself. Elkholy (2008) claims that, for Heidegger, it is "[t]hrough mood [that] humans gain access to their world, to themselves and to their relations with others in the world..." (p. 4). From within the Heideggerian framework, experiences of at least certain moods are thus "ontologically revelatory" (Stolorow, 2011, p. 136).

In short, both the universal structures of a person's human being, and the particular structures deriving from his actual lived experience with others, organize his affectivity, even if at differing levels of primordiality, disclosability and accessibility. Moreover, it is in the grip of one's affectivity that these organizations become emotionally visible and susceptible to understanding. The essential import is this: the nature of the human's very being, like the nature of his life experience, reveals itself in his emotional experiencing.

With this understanding, an analytic attitude of respect and value for our patients', and our own, affectivity is deepened perhaps even more than is already the case. Affectivity crystallizes in view as the subjective door through which existential kinship among humans can be communicated, felt and explored. The analyst might feel honored by the analysand's exposure and expression of existentially disclosive affects, which may present themselves in especially frank form in cases of trauma, but which also poignantly reverberate, if in perhaps less conspicuous fashion, in analysands' experiences of the analytic relationship and its limits (e.g., endings of sessions; fees; limits in the analyst's ability or willingness to meet her patient's unmet needs).

2. The second point of interplay (or at least one aspect of it) entails the possibility that, since the nature of the person's being-in-the-world is encoded in his affectivity, his ownership of his being --what Heidegger called "authentic existence"-- is facilitated by the person's ownership of his affectivity, perhaps especially his distinctive, existentially disclosive affects.¹ Stolorow (2010) has shown that owned or authentic existing entails an individual person's ownership of that which is the most constitutively and inalienably "mine" in his existence, and the affectivity that discloses it. Specifically, authentic existence entails the person's non-evasive ownership of his being-toward-death --the distinctive, inalienable temporal finitude of his individual being-- and the existential anxiety that discloses it.

After relationalizing certain paradoxically non-relational aspects of Heidegger's existential philosophy, Stolorow demonstrates that authentic being-toward-death necessarily also includes non-evasive being-toward-loss --that is, the person's ownership of the temporal finitude of his connections to others in his life, and the existential grief that discloses it. In short, a person's existential authenticity constitutively entails existential distinctness and is rooted in accepting and integrating as "mine" his being-toward-death -and-loss, and the anxiety and grief that disclose it.

Once Heidegger was relationalized in this way, Stolorow was able to draw a valuable experiential parallel between Heidegger's ontological concept of authentic existing, as just described, and the self-experiences of ownership and individuality. He advanced the following phenomenological contention for psychoanalysis: a person's intrinsic sense of ownership of his emotional life at large, and its concomitant enrichment of experiences of individualized selfhood, is enhanced by emotional integration of the "mineness" of both the distinctive existential anxiety of his own temporal finitude, and the grief that reflects the finitude of his connections to others.

Now, my focus in this second point of interplay is to stretch the implications of this inter-disciplinary parallel. In this stretch, I contend that ownership of distinctive existential anxiety and grief (and other existentially disclosive feelings (see Maduro, 2011)) appears to lead not only to enriched self-experiences of mineness and individuality, but also to the existential achievement of authentic existence. In essence, ownership of existential anxiety and grief (and other existentially disclosive affectivity) opens a door through which the person might --no doubt with the aid of his psychoanalyst-- make a genuine claim on his particular being-in-the-world as distinctively mine.

Understanding this, the psychoanalyst might feel an attitude of expansive optimism that her analytic work can help her patients live their lives more authentically by facilitating the integration of their existentially revelatory affects. Her psychoanalytic practice might aspire not only towards transformation of analysands' often unbearable and horizon-constraining personal emotional convictions, the legacies of failures in human relationships, but towards their ownership of the affects disclosive of their being-towards-death-and-loss as they are felt in their particular lives.

3. There are two pertinent methodological points of interplay between Intersubjective-Systems Theory and Heidegger's existential philosophy. The first is grounded in each discipline's use of phenomenological inquiry as the method to investigate its domain of study. Psychoanalytic phenomenology investigates, illuminates and comes to know the subjective structures deriving from a particular person's lived-experience with others. Philosophical phenomenology investigates, illuminates and comes to know the universal structures disclosive of his being-in-the-world .

This third interplay springs from the first one wherein the universal structures of a person's being-in-the-world are understood to organize his affectivity. Once this is appreciated, then psychoanalytic phenomenology, and in particular introspection and empathy (see Kohut, 1959), become qualified as methods to access and illuminate not only the particular subjective legacies of the person's lived experiencing, but also those reflective of the nature of his particular being-in-the-world.

Now, as expounded more below at interplay 5, psychoanalytic phenomenological inquiry always occurs with an eye on relational contextuality, and thus also distinguishes itself from philosophical phenomenology by exploring and illuminating the particular relational and world-contexts in which a person's affective structures (universal; particular; expansive, painful) move to the foreground of his experience of self-other-world. Phenomenological inquiry --the bread and butter of the psychoanalytic effort to illuminate and understand personal experiencing-- thereby becomes a royal road into, and the supreme epistemological angle on, the particular person's constitutively relational, unformulated affective structures (whether unvalidated or dynamic), both ontological (a priori) and particular (a posteriori). Psychoanalysis' special epistemological capacity here is of unique value when one aspect or another of the analysand's existential finitude shines forth in his unique life situation. In the end, psychoanalysis emerges as a practical and profoundly probative existential human practice.

If psychoanalysis is in part a method of knowing existentially disclosive feelings, then the psychoanalyst might feel special methodological pride in her investigations into emotional worlds. She might feel awe in the capacity of her phenomenological investigations to access the primordial configurations of her analysands', and her own, particular beings-in-the-world. At the same time, she might feel an attitude of humility, openness and patience during her emotional exploration of the unique situatedness of her analysand's existentially disclosive feelings. She would also have an attitude of readiness for powerful surprise.

4. The second methodological interplay (again grounded in interplay 1) entails the understanding that, just as the pre-reflective emotional convictions that derive from lived experience with others are susceptible to therapeutic illumination, reflective examination, and integration into the sense of self as "mine", so too are the pre-reflective universals of his being-in-the-world susceptible to illumination, reflective (philosophical) examination, and integration into the sense of self as "mine". In these ways, the nature of a person's being-in-the-world is revealed to be accessible to the psychoanalytic method of phenomenological exploration and illumination not only as investigative process, but also as therapeutic process.

As existential therapy, psychoanalytic phenomenology can help integrate the universals of an analysand's affectivity into individualized self experience and reflective awareness within which he might examine, understand and claim them as mine. In this, the psychoanalyst might feel an attitude of excitement, rich potential, and importance in the transformative and existential potency of her methodology and practice.

5. A final, mixed substantive and methodological point of interplay integrates the other points of interplay and adds one. It entails the appreciation that psychoanalysis' specialized knowledge of the relational contextuality of owned, and disowned, affectivity suggests that psychoanalysis has something immensely valuable to offer back to Heidegger's existential philosophy. That "something" consists primarily in knowledge that (i) it is others' emotional attunement, understanding and holding of existentially disclosive moods that enables a person to attempt to live authentically in the grip of his distinctive being, and (ii) especially where the person is thrown into traumatizing developmental contexts, it is through psychoanalytic practice, including transference and resistance analysis, that authentic existence can become practical and realized in the life of the individual person.

Here, Intersubjective-Systems Theory holds forth its relational contextualism, namely, its understanding of the intersubjective systems in which a person comes to bear -- or in the alternative flee from-- the affects disclosive of his particular being-in-the-world (perhaps especially being-toward-death-and-loss) and offers it to Heideggerian ontology in order to illuminate the therapeutic conditions under which a person's existential authenticity, or ownership of his existence, can be rendered embodied and lived.

In this inter-disciplinary gesture and gift, the psychoanalyst can feel epistemological and moral pleasure and pride in his phenomenological contextualism as both a theory and practice that gives back to philosophy --and by extension to human knowledge and being at large-- significant substantive and methodological wisdom. [And this notwithstanding all the denigration of it insisted upon by the medical and insurance industries... ☺]

References

Elkholy, S. N. (2008). Heidegger and a metaphysics of feeling: Angst and the finitude of being. London and New York: Continuum.

Heidegger, M. (1927). Being and time, trans. J. Macquarrie & E. Robinson. New York: Harper & Row, 1962.

Kohut, H. (1959). Introspection, empathy, and psychoanalysis. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 7:459 - 483.

Maduro, P. (2011). The mineness of my thrownness-into-relationship: Extending intersubjective-systems theory perspectives on experiences of personal ownership and individuality. Unpublished manuscript.

Stolorow, R. D. (2007). Trauma and Human Existence. New York, NY/London, UK: Analytic Press.

Stolorow, R. D. (2010). Individuality in context: The relationality of finitude, in Persons in context: The challenge of individuality in theory and practice, ed. R. Frie & W. Coburn, New York: Routledge (Chapter 4: pp. 59 - 68).

Stolorow, R. D. (2011). World, affectivity, trauma: Heidegger and post-Cartesian psychoanalysis. New York: Routledge.

¹ If this is true, the implications for psychoanalysis --which already possesses great expertise regarding the relational contexts that facilitate or obstruct ownership of affectivity, and the developmental impact of affect integration upon the sense of self and individuality-- are profound (see especially interplay point 4, below).