Varela and Contemporary Psychoanalysis, an Epistemological Gesture: From Representations to Co-emergence

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis paper intends to articulate common epistemological elements between Francisco Varela’s and Contemporary psychoanalytic relational-intersubjective theories. These shared elements could be described as a common epistemological gesture, the overcome of a reductionist and dualist paradigm, instead giving away to a paradigm of complexity. In both perspectives, a phenomenological and close to experience philosophical reflection is incorporated, which can account the human experience as an irreducible and valid source of knowledge. In Varela’s theory, the notion of embodiment permit to conceive the mind as natural endowment of the body. In Contemporary psychoanalytic theories, nature of human experience is conceive as intrisically social, proposing a “two person” psychology and the intersubjective model. Finally, in line with both currents and in a preliminary way, I propose the notion of co-emergency, seeking to overcome different forms of dualisms like internal/external, subject/world, I/Other, etc. From a clinical perspective, co-emergency can be conceived a s the coupling of two subjectivities, as a particular experiential mode of being with others, intending to overcome dualism regarding transference and represented mental states.