Commentary on Donna Orange's, “Recognition as: Intersubjective Vulnerability in the Psychoanalytic Dialogue”

Abstract

This article critiques Orange's review of the phenomenon of recognition in contemporary psychoanalytic literature. In particular I note that she engages in something of a misreading of recognition as it is described and explained in Relational psychoanalysis. By focusing on “mutual recognition” without considering its dialectic, “mutual negation” Orange misconstrues as in kind of coercive requirement by the analyst for her subjectivity be recognized. Missing from Orange's understanding of mutual recognition is that it is a corrective to mutual negation, the latter of which involves each parties experience of being misrecognized by the other, and, that in some cases devolves into states of “mutual inductive identification.” Under this circumstance, each feels themselves becoming more and more constrained by the respective roles in which each experience themselves cast. The misfortune of Oranges misreading is that it undermines areas in which both Relational psychoanalysis and Intersubjective Systems Theory can be seen as both overlapping and augmenting each other and can lend to the novel clinical model building in which I for one engage in both positing the role of Improvisation in treatment as well as an intersubjective/relational approach to couples therapy.