Intersubjective Dimension Research Articles

Social phenomenology: a personal research journey.

Phenomenology can often be used as a general approach in studies exploring 'experience'. However, social phenomenology can be seen as a distinct methodological approach for nursing research. To provide a reflective account of adopting social phenomenology as a preferred methodology in nursing research. Personal identity and philosophical viewpoints are not fixed and can change over time, in part due to evolving debates and influences in nursing. People construct meaning in the context in which they are situated and can contribute to researchers' standpoints at a particular point in time. This paper reflects a personal journey through various research influences to culminate in adopting a qualitative research methodology that draws on social and hermeneutic forms of phenomenology. The importance of continually revisiting our own positions as nurse researchers is proposed, to justify our chosen study approaches in a critical and transparent way. Exploring and understanding patients' experiences and their perspectives is fundamental to evidence-based nursing practice. Social phenomenology can provide a framework to explore the intersubjective dimensions of care, valuing the socio-historical and cultural aspects that influence behaviours, thoughts and actions.

Vulnerability, Resilience, and Surviving Destruction: Discussion of “The Analyst’s Experience of Trust and Mistrust”

In this response to Danielle Novack’s intellectually astute and clinically rich paper on the “analyst’s trust,” I reflect on the valuable ways in which Novack elucidates this undertheorized aspect of the analyst’s experience and reconfigures trust/mistrust as a meaningful intersubjective dimension of the therapeutic relationship. Novack shows how attending to shifts in trust/mistrust can provide valuable clues for deciphering the transference/countertransference. While I strongly agree with her construction of trust as a psychoanalytic achievement, I question the notion that the analyst’s trust is a necessary condition for her participation. Novack’s work on the analyst’s trust joins a broader contemporary conversation about potential overreaches in the relational paradigm, which I discuss. Finally, I consider the implications of Novack’s work for specifying the factors that underly resilience and engaging a conversation about surviving destruction in contemporary relational psychoanalysis.

Invisible Concealment of Invisibility Crypto-Judaism as a Theological Paradigm of Racial Anti-Semitism

The motif of secret, crypto-Judaism has a history that reaches further back into the theological tradition. It no doubt structurally arises from or closely related to the epistemo-political challenges posed by the unworldliness and absolutely inner being of faith, which in the political or inter-subjective dimension immediately raises the question of evidence. The question of evidence, i.e., for the invisible faith, becomes acute in the case of conversion, where the basic premise is the initial absence of faith. Paradoxically, conversion is consequently the establishment of the convert’s fundamental faithlessness, of her originally non-Christian element, which the convert, in the very same act of conversion, claims no longer exists. It is easy to see the conceptual constellation that would present the convert as structural deception. At the Iberian threshold of modernity, in the face of mass Jewish conversion and assimilation, this paradox appeared in the image of the “new Christians”, the marranos, structurally suspected to be crypto-Jews, to the effect that the ultimate evidence of faith was a certificate of limpieza de sangre, “purity of blood”. This paper will follow the historian Yosef HayimYerushalmi in tracing the conceptual link between the Inquisition’s notion of crypto-Jews and the racialized figure of the Jew in modern anti-Semitism.

Psychoanalysis in Three Dimensions: Ringstrom’s Relational Metapsychology: Discussion of “Three Dimensional Field Theory”

Although the analytic intersubjective field remains infinite in its potential forms, processes, and transformations, this commentary highlights Ringstrom’s 3D model (this issue) as tackling the challenge of theorizing the relational analytic act, explaining simultaneously the dimensions of metapsychology and practice. Within the epistemological premises of information theory, the 3D model offers a triangulation between the asymmetry of hemispheral modes of processing, consciousness as truth seeking and an intersubjective dramaturgic dimension to describe the vicissitudes and evolutions of an intersubjectively embedded subjectivity. Reading Ringstrom’s model through the corridor of some basic Freudian intuitions, I formulate my reading of the model’s unique conceptions of time, nothing, and otherness as agents of transformation in the thick relational web of the analytic dyad.

Between protocols and subject: quality of hospital care in a hematology service

The article presents partial results of a study at Hospital Edgar Santos, Universidade Federal da Bahia (HUPES), Brazil, analyzing the service's experience with improvement in quality of care within a context of hospital accreditation. The article focuses on the hematology service and specifically its quality of care and intersubjective processes. The study adopted a qualitative approach, using interviews and observation. From the theoretical point of view, the work of Campos, Cecílio, and Merhy acknowledge healthcare's complex nature and micropolitical and intersubjective dimension and the capacity of health professionals to produce meanings and practice creativity. To understand the health professionals' processes of psychosocial linkage and subjective mobilization, we drew on concepts from the French school of psychosociology (Enriquez) and Dejours' psychodynamics of work. The analysis was organized along three lines: psychosocial linkage and the imaginary of self-management; bonding and affect: singularity of the subject's care and clinical case; real work and the healthcare team. One of the main conclusions is the building of a self-management imaginary, expressed in shared projects, expectations, and some forms of interpreting and operating reality, based on affectively invested representations of autonomy and unity. Alongside technical elements such as protocols, the article highlights professional judgment, proper to the intersubjective dimension, fostering the singularity of care. In our view, the real work in the patient care scene is traversed by adjustments that demonstrate team cooperation.

Uczucie, osoba i wartości w fenomenologicznych badaniach Edyty Stein

W niniejszym artykule podejmuje się próbę przeanalizowania zaprezentowanych przez Edytę Stein w O zagadnieniu wczucia opisów relacji między uczuciami, osobą oraz wartościami. Pokaże się przede wszystkim, na czym polega postulowana przez Stein korelacja między osobą a wartościami. Istotne dla tego celu będzie zarysowanie Stein fenomenologii uczucia. W artykule wskazuje się na problematyczność niektórych ujęć proponowanych przez autorkę. Zwraca się uwagę przede wszystkim na niedostateczność analizy przedmiotowej strony uczuć oraz istoty wartości. Centralnym punktem krytyki jest jednak pogląd Stein, traktujący czucie wartości oraz uczucia jako dwa kierunki jednego przeżycia. Pokazuje się, czym w ujęciu autorki jest osoba oraz w jaki sposób dochodzi do jej fenomenologicznej konstytucji. Stawia się również omawiane zagadnienia w kontekście intersubiektywności. Argumentuje się, że według Stein własne życie emocjonalne człowieka posiada istotne znaczenie dla rozumienia innych osób. Analizę O zagadnieniu wczucia pogłębia się przez wskazanie na pewne zmiany w ujęciu zagadnień aksjologicznych w późniejszych rozprawach Stein.

The <i>Tekhne</i>-Logic Revolution. Rethinking the “Interobjective” Dimension of the Integral Theory. Consequences and Relevance to Education

Wilber’s Integral Theory is a framework, widely used in different fields, aimed at unifying the premodern, modern and postmodern legacies and worldviews in one system. The subjective, objective and intersubjective dimensions of the Integral Theory correspond respectively to each one of the mentioned worldviews. This article reviews and explores in depth the interobjective dimension, necessary for a really quaternary integral approach, which has to include appropriately the human work and creativity. This is achieved trough understanding the interobjective character of the tekhne logic. Tekhne is the Aristotelian word to designate “productive science”. The study discusses the foundation of the interobjective at different levels (ontological, anthropological, cultural and psychological) and describes the evolutionary character of the tekhne logic. Finally the article explores the relevance of this characterization to the Integral Theory; but also to Metaphysics, Epistemology and especially to Education.

Quand la transformation s’annonce : les rêves initiatiques

ObjectivesThe clinic in general and the transcultural consultation in particular are constantly faced with new challenges in the relationship between intrapsychic and intersubjective dimensions. This implies continuous innovation in treatment, especially for migrant patients. We consider migrant patients afflicted by an impossible initiation represent a paradigmatic example of the above-mentioned issues. They are stuck in a hopeless paradox: there are unable to return to their country of origin and lack of initiatory rituals with symbolic efficiency in the host society. MethodThis article presents the analysis of a clinical vignette stemming from a transcultural consultation setting wand based on a literature review of the oneiric initiatory dimension among Maya dream specialists in Mexico. ResultsFindings suggest that oneiric initiatory metaphor may constitute a powerful therapeutic lever for migrant patients with initiatory difficulties. ConclusionsThe oneiric initiatory dreams may accomplish the above-mentioned function provided that they are used as cultural models of oneiric interpretation, consistently with treatment goals and in a therapeutic group setting.

‘You can hear wholly only if you remove the waxes in your ears’: The Hararghe Oromo’s theory for establishing the intersubjective foundation of cognition

The article sets out to examine the way the Hararghe Oromo in Ethiopia use their mirriiysa culture to express and cultivate criticality, mindfulness, interpersonal sensitivity and emotional intelligence. The paper discusses the nature of the performance culture and analyses the social psychological meanings of a set of mirriiysa texts collected from a group of folk performers who participated also in the interpretation and analysis of the cultural, social and psychological meanings of the texts. For theory, the study drew on interpretivism. During data analysis, the horizontal and vertical planes of analysis interacted and reinforced each other. The act of removing earwax symbolizes a cultural dimension of intersubjectivity and interaffectivity. The analyses indicated that mirriiysa is a socio-cultural performance wherein listening, understanding and responding occur in socially meaningful and interactive contexts. To understand the communicative intent of a mirriiysa text, one should take broader perspectives and pay due attention to the non-linguistic elements that offer the performance holistic import. The paper highlights the implication of these and other findings for our understanding of the meanings of mirriiysa and other genre performances.

New Insight into Affectivity in Schizophrenia: from the Phenomenology of Marc Richir

Background: According to Karl Jaspers, psychopathology requires a comprehensive method, understood as a systematic exploration of the first-person perspective of the patient's experience. At the same time, however, schizophrenia for Jaspers is characterized by its radical incomprehensibility. In addition, Rümke's so-called “praecox feeling” paradoxically combines the incomprehensibility of schizophrenic experience and the evidence of its pathological manifestation in the encounter. Aim: Through a re-examination of the notions of affectivity and interaffective contact we propose a coherent theoretical model to explain the clinician's paradoxical understanding of schizophrenia. Method: Phenomenological tradition regards affectivity as an encompassing phenomenon that connects body, self, world, and others. In our view, only a thorough and systematic link between corporeity and affectivity is able to explain embodied affective resonance as a basis of empathic comprehension. By drawing on the phenomenology of Marc Richir, we will systematically unfold the complex nature of affectivity and lead it back to a twofold constitution of corporeality. Conclusion: The Richirian account on affectivity can be fruitfully put into discussion with other recent phenomenological models on schizophrenia. It might be able to exhibit affectivity as the operative ground of minimal self-disturbance and thus argue for its intersubjective dimension.

Tensiones y negociaciones en el campo: tres experiencias etnográficas con comunidades indígenas de Salta (Argentina)

Este artículo reflexiona en torno al trabajo de campo antropológico. Comenzamos enmarcando nuestros estudios en relación con las líneas disciplinarias de la antropología local. Luego presentamos y describimos tres situaciones significativas acontecidas en nuestros trabajos etnográficos, con el fin de analizar los accesos y las permanencias en el campo, en contextos de interacción con grupos de adscripción indígena. Estas experiencias nos permiten abordar la dimensión intersubjetiva del campo antropológico, repensar las relaciones de alteridad entre quienes investigamos y nuestros interlocutores, así como analizar cómo nos vemos afectados en este proceso y sus repercusiones en la construcción de conocimiento.

Pope Francis’ Affirmative Ecology for Pacific Islands Indigenous Community

Pope Francis’ Encyclical Letter “Laudato Si’: Encyclical on Climate Change and Inequality, On Care for Our Common Home” revives the Catholic Church social justice tradition to unite the concern for environmental degradation, with the attention to society, especially the poor. With a narrative of remarkable humaneness, Pope Francis’ ecology discourse focuses on environmental emergency and misuse of resources, social and economic consumerism, notions of responsibility and exclusion of marginal communities. Based on an analysis of Pope Francis’ encyclical letter, this article elaborates a framework for rethinking ecology in the context of the Pacific Islands Indigenous cultures who are suffering directly as a result of climate change. I suggest that Pope Francis’ affirmative ecology promotes an “integral and shared development,” the intimately interdependent relationship between humankind and nature, which echoes the Pacific Indigenous intersubjective dimensions of environment. Environmental care and attention rely both on a moral individual and collective responsibility, rather than regulatory adjustments that underestimate traditional cultural and social practices. For Pacific Indigenous communities, Pope Francis’ analysis is provocative, for it not only offers new hope for the future but also because it calls into question basic assumptions about global consumption and common ways of living that have negatively affected the environment of this region.

Personal trajectories, collective memories: Remembering and the life-course

How do we understand the broad history to which we belong? What meaning do we give to it and what role does it have in our lives? This paper proposes to approach collective memory from the perspective of the subject, adopting a developmental perspective to explore how people build specific relations and representations of the historical past. Building on the literature on collective remembering and on life-course studies, it conceptualises memory an as oriented, culturally mediated and dialogical action with a developmental history, embodied in ‘trajectories of remembering’. This conception is applied to the life trajectory of Alain, a 44-year-old Belgian journalist, with a particular interest in the social and intersubjective dimensions of collective remembering. From this analysis, it will be concluded that people's relation to history is the product of the different positions they assume through time. The study of these successive experiences and their integration can thus shed new lights on how we relate to history and give it meaning.

Socialtjänstens roll i samhällets krisberedskap – en studie ur personalens perspektiv

The aim of this study is to contribute to knowledge as regard the relationship between the social services and the public system for crisis preparedness as seen from the perspective of social services staff with direct contact with clients and/or first-line leaders. Empirically the study concerns the staff’s experience of severe events and of activities and processes pertaining to crisis preparedness, such as risk and vulnerability analysis, education and exercises. Further, it concerns staff’s valua- tion of major risks and of crisis preparedness as an area of operation. The material was obtained with a web based questionnaire (N=1020) with closed and open questions and with room for free text. The material was analysed in terms of frequencies and subjected to open qualitative coding. The results suggests that the staff are not involved in the activities and processes of crisis prepared- ness to a significant extent, although they seem to be motivated. They do not seem to have been given opportunities to develop an understanding of crisis preparedness and how it affects social services. They also seem to have a composite understanding of central concepts in the area of crisis preparedness such as crisis, extraordinary events, risk and vulnerability. Their understanding seems to be underpinned by considerations involving intersubjective dimensions of security. It is concluded that it would be beneficial for the system of crisis preparedness if the social servi- ces were systematically involved and differing notions of central concepts were clarified. Further, given an acknowledgement of the role of intersubjective dimensions of security the social services could contribute perspectives informed by their close contacts with users and the general popula- tion as regards risks, vulnerability and consequences of crisis and disasters. It is argued that this would contribute qualitatively to crisis preparedness as an area of operation.

Nursing care in early childhood: contributions from intersubjective recognition.

to understand the elements composing intersubjective recognition that are relevant for nursing care in early childhood in favor of comprehensive child development. reflexive study based on the Honnethian concept of intersubjective recognition in the dimensions of affection, defense of rights, and social esteem. nursing knowledge and practices, permeated by the intersubjective recognition in the mentioned dimensions, contribute to the dynamism of interpersonal relations, the production of co-responsibility, and shared construction of health care in early childhood, with benefits to comprehensive development. a successful coordination of the three intersubjective dimensions enables the expansion of the understanding on childhood and nursing care in child health in the field of human development promotion, covering affection, defense of rights, and social esteem in the established relationships with future positive individual and social possibilities.

The Intersubjective Dimension of Schizophrenia

The subjective disturbances of schizophrenia have long been established in a coherent phenomenological theory. The intersubjective dimension of the disorder, however, sometimes seems to be underrepresented. This article explores the intersubjective disturbances and evaluates their meaning for our theoretical understanding and explanation of the disorder. First, the work of influential psychopathologists of schizophrenia is analyzed and it is argued that, since the earliest descriptions of the disorder, intersubjectivity and its disturbances have been acknowledged to play an important role. Second, the symptoms, signs, and phenomena of schizophrenia are analyzed from the perspective of intersubjectivity. This shows that both mundane and transcendental inter-subjectivity are essentially disturbed. The problem then consists of integrating the subjective and intersubjective disturbances. I argue that the current phenomenological approach to schizophrenia may need to extend its focus to include the intersubjectivity disturbances more explicitly, and I explore theoretical ways to do so. A possible ‘pathological organizer’ that may succeed in integrating subjective and intersubjective dimensions of the disorder is ‘open subjectivity’.

Psychoanalytic Companioning

In this paper I offer an integration of object relations and relational conceptions of clinical interaction and suggest a register of psychoanalytic companioning. I suggest that when working with patients and states where there is no self-other definition and therefore no mutuality, the path to healing and growth is via companioning the patient into the darker, more regressed and unformed states of illusion and merger rather than via the promotion of separateness and relatedness, which, I propose, will accrue from within the companioning register. The analyst works from within an unobtrusive relational position. I offer a case example of my work in this register and suggest that this offers a different register of the use of the analyst’s subjectivity: one that is receptive, “cooperative” (Trevarthen) and responsive to the patient’s internal world and objects, rather than analytic and knowing. I consider the dimensions of intersubjectivity that cohere with the dimensions and levels of the patient’s mentalization as outlined by Leciurs and Bouchard (1997).

Personhood, animalism, and advanced directives: The intersubjective and affective heart of the matter

Personhood, animalism, and advanced directives: The intersubjective and affective heart of the matter

Agency and Anxiety: Delusions of Control and Loss of Control in Schizophrenia and Agoraphobia.

We review the distinction between sense of agency and sense of ownership, and then explore these concepts, and their reflective attributions, in schizophrenic symptoms and agoraphobia. We show how the underlying dynamics of these experiences are different across these disorders. We argue that these concepts are complex and cannot be reduced to neural mechanisms, but involve embodied and situated processes that include the physical and social environments. We conclude by arguing that the subjective and intersubjective dimensions of agency and ownership cannot be considered in isolation from one another, but instead form an interdependent pairing.

Narrative in Medicine and History: how fiction reminds us of who we are

Reading enhances our imagination, our narrating and listening skills, our capacity to deal with time and space, thus enlightening our ethical self-awareness as human beings. The key to know how to deal with theoretical principles and practical cases lies in hermeneutics, since a demanding ethical position requires a demanding hermeneutical procedure. Based on the novel The Storyteller, by Jodi Picoult, this essay aims at stressing the role of literary narratives in the field of Bioethics if one wants to focus on the right questions instead of searching for the one correct answer. The reading of this novel reminds us of the importance of telling one’s story in order to perceive our own identity, in order to deal with the pain of remembering and so that we may be able to forgive and to promise. The Storyteller , a story built of storie s by different voices, focuses our attention on the work of memory and narrative, reminding us of the thought provoking book by Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition , and allowing us to bring in Paul Ricouer’s theory of the identity in Soi-Meme comme un Autre , as well as The Wounded Storyteller by Arthur W. Frank.The intersubjective dimension of therapeuticrelationships and the relevance of narrative knowledge in health care recognized by Narrative Medicine demand from the health professionals the development of the skills of a storyteller and those of a story listener/reader. Reading The Storyteller makes us face the pillars of Narrative Medicine without focusing on health issues, by making us instead read about storytellers while we are asked to be story-listeners and story-builders.