The Personal and Historical Nature of Psychoanalytic Interdisciplinary Work

Abstract

This article is framed by the question of whether or not different academic disciplines’ or individual persons’ scientific paradigms—meta-assumptions about what is true and real—must be commensurable in order for interdisciplinary, or personal therapeutic, dialogue to be constructive. In respect of personal scientific paradigms, the author contends it is crucial to appreciate the historical nature of any psychoanalyst’s meta-assumptions about self, other, and world when considering this issue of commensurability. The author shows how his own traumatic father loss as a child, and others’ responses to his emotional reaction, gave rise to his personal values of relationality, affectivity, and courageous knowing. He then illuminates the ways in which those historically rooted organizing values motivate him to evaluate his conversation partners’ philosophical convictions and values, their compatibility with his own, and, by extension, the possibilities for expansive interdisciplinary integration.