A Philosophy for the Embedded Analyst

Containing and Responding

“…Hoffman stresses that the analy.st can rarely, if ever, be aware of the unconscious basis for the motivation of a countertransference response or enactment, and therefore cannot be accurate if he does disclose his thoughts about his behavior (Gill, 1982;Hoffman, 1983;Stern, 1989Stern, , 1991. However, this is equally true for the patient, and yet we expect the patient to at least make the attempt to explore the motivations of his or her emotional experience and actions.…”

Postmodern epistemology: The problem of validation and the retreat from therapeutics in psychoanalysis

“…Instead, Stern (1991) moves in a direction increasingly seen among postmodern thinkers seeking to ground analytic technique in an evidentiary realm unique to a psychoanalytic hermeneutics. The focus on the patient as the key arbiter of our technique tends to yield to a focus on the analyst and her or his subjectivity as of primary importance in the task of improving technique.…”

“…The problem is, rather, that it remains hypothetical. For instance, Stern (1991), speaking approvingly of Gadamer's concept of the hermeneutic circle, even begins to suggest a framework for a rigorous clinical methodology:…”

“…I will argue that the postmodern emphasis on epistemology, on the inherent uncertainty and ambiguity of the analyst's clinical understandings, tends to shift our attention away from recognizing and expanding the frequent and significant moments of certainty and accurate understanding in the analytic relationship. Donnel Stern (1991) has argued that modern hermeneutics proceeds on the assumption that "misunderstanding is the natural state of affairs" (p. 56). In other words, the postmodern critique of how and what the analyst knows tends to draw attention more to how this knowledge is biased, contingent, and constructed than to how the analyst can use clinical data to systematically validate his or her knowledge and generate more accurate versions of this knowledge.…”

Social construction and psychoanalytic promise commentary on paper by Michael J. Bader

“…There would be few means of judging whether there was improvement in the patient and scarce justification for claiming therapeutic expertise. Indeed, the stakes in this case are enormous, and it is for this reason that even postmodern psychoanalytic critics have gone to great effort to salvage something from the postmodern critique (e.g., Stern, 1991;Hoffman, 1992;Mitchell, 1993). Yet, it must be recognized here that dualist epistemologies in general, along with the empiricist view of knowledge-both of which are presumed in Bader's defense of the tradition-have precious few defenders remaining in contemporary philosophy.…”