Abstract
The author responds to Orange's critique of her theory of recognition, which asserts that relational intersubjective theory replaces analytic empathy with an imperative that the patient recognize the analyst's subjectivity. She agrees with Orange that the therapeutic stance is based on empathizing with the patient but argues that it should allow the patient to gradually experience the analyst as a separate subject. Recognition is not imposed but rather a relieved appreciation that this separate person does not need to be omnipotently managed by a caretaker child desperately trying to suppress or regulate his own needs. This idea of recognition follows Winnicott's notion that the analyst external subjectivity arises by disconfirming the patient's fantasy of “destroying” a weak or retaliatory object. Orange's position implies that only one partner at a time can be subject, hence implicitly reproduces the very subject-object structure that theories of intersubjectivity were meant to solve.
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