The three faces of two‐person psychology development, ontology, and epistemology

Psychoanalysis as a vocation

“…I argue that the primary issue here is not whether we disclose this to the patient, but how we think about our use of our felt responses and how we make access to our thinking available to the patient (Bollas, 1987(Bollas, , 1989. In revealing (in whatever varying degrees) our thought process, in abandoning the objectivist hope of dispelling fear through a technical stance, we are emphasizing the importance of thinking (see Spezzano, 1996) as a way to tolerate and work within a situation that, as Bion said, ought to inspire fear. Let us suppose that this fear relates to the real possibility of failing to heal the patient.…”

“…The most complex questions of epistemology reverberate in the anxious inner world of the beginning practitioner (see Mitchell, 1993). If learning to tolerate not-knowing is one of the hardest tasks in learning psychoanalysis, then this is particularly true insofar as it occurs in a context in which the tradition of authorized analysts happily claimed, in some cases still claim, to know exactly what a good analysis looks like (Spezzano, 1996). The old analytic ideal of authority posited an analyst with the power to know what is right to do because one can and should know what is in the mind of the other.…”

Thomas Ogden's phenomenological turn

“…Hegel's master-servant paradigm has been used by numerous object relational theorists (Ogden, 1986(Ogden, ,1989Benjamin, 1988;Modell, 1993;Spezzano, 1996) to help explain the embeddedness of the subject in its relation to the other. Modell (1993) has gone so far as to state: "I doubt whether our present psychology of intersubjectivity could have developed without Hegel... Hegel can justifiably be termed the first intersubjective or relational psychologist" (pp.…”

Further remarks on papers by Spezzano and Gerson

“…Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 6(6): [895][896][897][898][899][900][901]1996 Further Remarks on Papers by Spezzano and Gerson Steven H. Cooper, Ph.D. M Y DISCUSSION (COOPER, 1996) OF THE PAPERS BY GERSON (1996) and Spezzano (1996) aimed to elaborate some of the overlap and contrast that can result when different analysts view the sides of the one-versus two-person dichotomy. I was surprised to be thought of Spezzano as being on a "team" that tried to restore the balance of virtue in response to a one-person psychology rather than preserve the virtue of his attempt at developing the intrapsychic-intersubjective dialectic.…”