Intersubjective Experience Research Articles

Between Persons: How Concepts of the Person Make Moral Experience Possible

AbstractMoral theories often conflate morality with society or mind, while detaching mind from society, and society from subjectivity. This eliminates the existential “space between” persons where morality is a process of making mutually recognized lives possible. Moral experience is a cultural experience of intersubjectivity, which has social and cultural, subjective and reflective, imaginative and practical, and existential and bodily dimensions. Concepts of the person organize the moral possibilities of intersubjectivity; they can help situate culturally formulated ethics in “the space between persons” in ways that help generate the moral presence afforded others and self.

The Intersubjective Experience of the Physical Body in the Clinical Setting of Eating Disorders

This paper will illuminate one dimension of self-disclosure as it relates to the inescapable presence of the body in treatment, and the female clinician’s ability to bring her physical body into clinical discussions during an encounter with a female client with an eating disorder. Although the clinical literature on eating disorders validates that transference and countertransference issues are particularly powerful, it generally neglects the exploration of these issues specific to the body’s physical presentation. Since body dissatisfaction is increasingly normative for women today, female clinicians need to have a theoretical road map on which to rely when they encounter a shared body experience. Thus, in order to encourage discussions of the therapist’s body in clinical social work practice, the body needs to be situated in a larger theoretical framework within which it can be explained and located; this framework is object relations theory viewed through an intersubjective lens. Concepts from object relations theory will demonstrate the importance of the body in the clinical exchange by highlighting the parallel between Winnicott’s ‘good enough’ mother and the ‘good enough’ therapist’s body. When the therapist is able to judiciously invite discussions of her body into the clinical arena, the client is given the opportunity to move from object relating to object usage. A case presentation exemplifies how this conceptual framework can be applied to clinical social work practice, strengthening the relationship between knowing and doing.

Radical empiricism, intersubectivity and the importance of praxis in the philosophy of Gabriel Marcel

The philosophy of Gabriel Marcel is informed by the classical tradition of American philosophy – most notably William James, William Ernest Hocking and Josiah Royce. At a time when Marcel scholarship is at risk of being eclipsed by abstract modes of philosophical discourse, a return to the classical American sources of Marcel's thought is vital. This article investigates Marcel's thought from the standpoint of James’ conception of radical empiricism, the primacy of intersubjective experience in Hocking’s philosophy, and the importance of praxis in the later Royce. Marcel’s openness to the classical American tradition in philosophy is a function of the Catholic character of Marcel’s thought.

Cuerpos significantes. Nuevas travesías dialécticas

Este artículo traza una breve genealogía de mis investigaciones socioantropológicas sobre la corporalidad en Argentina, partiendo del entrecruzamiento entre ciertas experiencias intersubjetivas que involucraron intensamente la corporalidad desde lo sensorial y emotivo, las performances artísticas y las etnografías realizadas desde mediados de los años noventa. A partir de esta travesía inicial, que vincula experiencias personales y producciónartística e intelectual, en un contexto geopolítico e histórico determinado, discuto tres problemáticas teóricometodológicas claves en el campo actual de los estudios sobre el cuerpo en América Latina, por cuanto constatamos que también otros colegas de nuestros países las comparten. En primer lugar, sobre los modos en que nuestras corporalidades y, agregaría, nuestras producciones intelectuales sobre el cuerpo son el resultado de un complejo entramado de materialidades biológicas, tecnologías, procesos psicológicos,intersubjetivos, históricos y político-culturales que entrelazan sensaciones, movimientos,afectividades, imágenes, representaciones y discursos. Por ello, creemos que el desafío ante tal complejidad es evitar caer en un reduccionismo del cuerpo que lo someta a la mirada unilateral de una sola disciplina, y tratar de avanzar, en cambio, hacia una progresiva interdisciplinariedad.

EPA-1237 – Polyglot therapies - the implications of neuroscientific findings and child development research on clinical practice

Freud started his career as a neurologist studying polyglot aphasias. In a globalised world, the question of polyglot psychotherapies is increasingly important. Neuroscientific findings and child development research support theories on embodied semantics (Pulvermuller, 2013): the emergence of meaning primarily from somatic/sensorimotor experiences. Increasing evidence supports the importance of the mirror neuron system in the process of language acquisition (Moreno et al, 2013) and the development of cognition (Perlovsky, 2013). Threvarthen's studies suggest that onthologically, language development is dependent on dynamic patterns of the embodied intersubjective experiences of the child. Age and contextual factors influence language acquisition. Nevertheless, little is known as to what extent and in what quality multimodal experiences are at play at the time of second language acquisition and in what way these are superimposed on early embodied experiences. Neuroimaging studies have proved that with second language acquisition differential activations remain within brain regions; (Halsband et al, 2002) yet with the progression of proficiency, the different languages converge onto a shared neural system underlying language processing (Perani et al., 2005). In light of these findings, the author will discuss the advantages and difficulties of working across languages in the therapeutic setting. Cultural aspects of dynamic patterning and thus their influence on emotional development will be highlighted. Questions will be raised about the possibility that the retrieval of emotional aspects of memories varies in different languages and how this can be utilised in polyglot therapies. Finally, the significance of the somatic counter-transference in polyglot therapies will be discussed.

On the Development of the Autobiographical Self and Autobiographical Memory—Implicit and Explicit Aspects

The autobiographical self and autobiographical memory are developed in a reciprocal process. Both have implicit aspects, inaccessible to consciousness, as well as explicit, conscious aspects. The latter are lost to infantile amnesia by about the fifth year of life, while the implicit aspects are retained. Implicit memory content strongly influences feeling, thinking, and acting, out of our awareness. Only a fraction of overall brain activity is accessible to consciousness. The individual stages of development are described in terms of their genetically programmed maturation steps, as well as their prerequisites in specific, individual, inter-subjective experience. In its particular significance for development, the verbalization of implicit knowledge (“internal-state talk”) in the form of narration will be explained and illustrated. Knowledge of normal development and possible aberrations facilitates, in psychotherapy as a “talking cure,” the alteration of “implicit relational knowledge” strived for through expression in language of the explicit conscious insights made possible by new experience gathered in the analytic relationship.

On Intimacy in the Classroom

What is the lived experience of teachers and students in school? How does that lived experience constitute a kind of learning on its own apart from any particular outcome? This article addresses the ways teachers and students encounter one another in schools and why the quality of those encounters is paramount in both the child’s and the teacher’s intersubjective experience. It is a first-person teacher account that looks at a progressive pedagogy within a public school classroom, drawing on fields in a number of disciplines to discuss both the opportunities and perils of a classroom designed to increase our capacity for intimacy.

Methodological Paper: Phenomenological research: The case of Empirical Phenomenological Analysis and the possibility of reverie

Content and FocusThis article will discuss phenomenology and phenomenological research methods, and through an exploration of the case of Empirical Phenomenological Analysis (EPA) will explore the possibility of a phenomenological approach to research through reverie. With regard to the relationship between phenomenology and ‘phenomenological research’, Husserlian phenomenology implies ‘research’, therefore, making the term ‘phenomenological research’ redundant and a misnomer. However, there exists an abundance of ‘phenomenological research methods’, which despite claiming to focus on the lived experienced of the participant, stand contrary to phenomenology in that they are broadly empirical, systematised and psychologise the notion of phenomenology. The case of EPA, which is a phenomenological research method, empirical in nature and mediated in line with ‘scientific practices’ will be discussed in depth. In turn, through the critical analysis of EPA, we see the need for an alternative approach to research, which is apposite with phenomenology’s philosophical aims. As a result, reverie, which includes abstract musings, ruminations and wonderings, will be discussed as an approach to research through phenomenology. It is argued that reverie, contrary to traditional ‘phenomenological research methods’, facilitates access to the participants’ concerns through an attendance to subjective and intersubjective experience in the research process, enabling the relational to emerge in and through research.

Intersubjective Experience of the Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health Consultant–Program Administrator Consultee Relationship

ABSTRACTInfant and early childhood mental health consultation has emerged as one of the most common and effective strategies for supporting young children's socioemotional development. A key contributing factor for successful outcomes with this approach is the mental health consultant–consultee relationship. However, there have been no in‐depth qualitative studies to examine the intersubjective nature of the infant and early childhood mental health consultant–program administrator consultee relationship. In this study, 10 infant and early childhood mental health consultants and 15 program administrator consultees who worked together on the Erikson Institute–Illinois State Board of Education Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health Consultation Project were interviewed using qualitative, constructivist, grounded theory methodology. Results suggest that there are multiple internal and external factors that influence the consultant–administrator relationship, resulting in each relationship being a unique, co‐created relationship while sharing similar overall characteristics. Although the relationship can be challenging, especially for consultants during the engagement process, through repeated interactions with each other over an extended period of time, consultants and administrators increasingly experience the relationship to be positive and transformative. Similar to other studies on the early childhood mental health consultant–consultee relationship, it was found that there is a clear relationship between consultants’ and administrators’ perceptions of the relationship.

Field Theory as a Metaphor and Metaphors in the Analytic Field and Process

This article deals with field theory issues in the frame of Latin American thought, linking it to the subject of metaphor in psychoanalysis. In the first part of this article, some general developments about the theme of metaphor and about metaphor in psychoanalysis are exposed. I present the concept of dynamic field theory in the vision of Madeleine and Willy Baranger; the metaphoric processes implicit in this theory, and interpretations formulated over different basic concepts. In the second part, I develop a personal perspective of the field theory, supporting myself on examples of my clinical practice. I describe the characteristics of moments of intense communication between patient and analyst and the metaphoric processes implicit in interpretations. These metaphoric processes enable the integration of different levels of the intersubjective experience created between patient and analyst. I postulate a dialectic point of view that allows the articulation of a situational perspective that studies the specific intersubjective moments of change in the analysis, with a vision that considers the process of analysis through time. Conclusions are formulated regarding the role of metaphor in analysis and the future of the field theory in the context of theoretical and technical pluralism of current psychoanalysis.

Children’s synchrony and rhythmicity in imitation of peers: Toward a developmental model of empathy

The main mechanisms of children’s imitative exchanges with peers are highlighted here through a developmental approach taking into account the importance of rhythmicity and synchrony. We focused on spontaneous motor imitation to describe a playful dynamic that is paradoxical: in the experience of play in which roles are not clearly distributed, mutual discovery of the self and others gradually arises. From an integrative perspective, this form of interaction, produced by positional reversal and turn taking, is apprehended through two axis. On the temporal plan, it can be considered as a rhythmic pattern with repetition and synchrony. Moreover, these mutual exchanges between the self and others challenge visuo-spatial abilities in children who must be able to change their reference point through an operation of mental rotation. Based on this description of the intersubjective experience produced through a succession of spatial and symbolic viewpoint changes, a developmental model of empathy is offered and discussed. According to this model, the capacity of empathy has two dimensions, emotional and cognitive, and is understood as a process involved in child development. In this article, we propose that empathy is more than the “mere” capacity of decentration corresponding to the acquisition of a theory of mind. It involves an individual in relationship with others and who has the ability to integrate perspectives.

PMS as a process of negotiation: Women’s experience and management of premenstrual distress

The absence of reports of Premenstrual Syndrome (PMS) in contexts such as China, Hong Kong, and India has led to the conclusion that PMS is a culture-bound syndrome. This qualitative study examines whether is it possible for women in a Western cultural context to negotiate negative premenstrual change in order to effectively avoid or reduce premenstrual distress. Sixty women who self-defined as a ‘PMS sufferer’ took part in one-to-one interviews, which were analysed using theoretical thematic analysis from a material–discursive–intrapsychic (MDI) perspective. Three major themes were consistently identified across relationship type and context, reflecting women’s strategies of premenstrual self-regulation and coping: ‘Self-monitoring and awareness: recognition and acceptance of premenstrual change’; ‘Coping through self-regulation of premenstrual distress’, including: ‘avoidance of stress and conflict’, ‘escaping relational demands and responsibilities’, and ‘care of the self’; and ‘Coping as an inter-subjective experience’. These findings challenge the view of PMS as a fixed unitary syndrome, suggesting that premenstrual change is an ongoing process of negotiation, in which women are agentic subjects, not passive ‘PMS sufferers’. This has implications for therapists working with women reporting moderate–severe PMS, suggesting that the reframing of ‘symptoms’ as normal change, behavioural coping strategies, and self-monitoring, can effectively reduce premenstrual distress.

Being There: Poetic Landscape

In early 2012, I was invited by Pilbara Writers group in Karratha to make a poetry map for the Pilbara region when they saw the Poetry 4 U website (http://poetry4U.org ) where poems are pinned to geographic locations. I visited the Pilbara June 17 – 23, 2012 to commence the poetry mapping project with members of the Pilbara Writers group. By walking with video when writers took me to their favourite places I was able to document visceral intersubjective experiences of these places, of being there together, so that I could empathically share the writers’ sense of landscape. This paper discusses what happens when a hodological approach is taken to explore connections and flows between poetic expressions, places and landscapes.

1441 – Promising contributions of a phenomenological enquire of intersubjectivity: the intersubjective data in psychiatric diagnosis and research

Intersubjective experience and phenomena addressed in psychiatric diagnosis are not available to standard scientific research. Many authors focused on intersubjectivity and the analysis of their work helps informing and clarifying how to address these facts. This presentation aims to review the works of A. Shultz, C. Jaspers, F. Buytendijk, M. Heidegger, M Scheler (and others) on intersubjectivity in a phenomenological standpoint. Approaching intersubjectivity from a phenomenological standpoint and its relations with current problems of psychiatric diagnosis and research. Selective analysis of literature on phenomenological enquires of intersubjectivity in the field of Philosophy and Psychiatry Research in psychopathology and psychiatry must neither treat intersubjective data as residuum nor try and reify data that resists reductionism and mechanistic explanations. Intersubjectivity is inherent to the meaning of psychopathological understanding and phenomena There is need for new methods of enquire for many data in psychiatry. Researchers and clinicians must find new ways to deal with psychiatric objects and with relational data.

Analysis of adolescent girls’ sexual subjectivity

It is difficult to take no notice of the gap existing between the relevance of the theme of sexuality in adolescence for young people themselves and the lack of attention of academia trying to understand, analyze, and conceptualize this experience of young people. There is still a need to understand the profound subjective sexual experience in adolescence, i.e. to reveal the pathways how the feeling that “I am a sexual person” arises in an adolescent’s self-awareness. The aim of the present study was to update and expand the understanding of the phenomenon of the adolescent sexuality experience and to offer an updated model of understanding it, which has been created with reference to adolescents’ narratives. Particularly, it is meant to understand, organize, and analyze a typical, characteristic of the normal development of adolescent girls’ sexual experience, highlighting the discursive position of the subject in order to answer one basic question: how or in what way in the awareness of an adolescent arises the feeling that “I am a sexual person”. The interpretive qualitative study of the exploratory strategy was based on a hermeneutic phenomenological methodological investigator’s position for interpreting the experience of the participants. Data obtained during a semi-structured interview were analyzed using the method of interpretative phenomenological analysis (Smith et al., 2009). The findings have been interpreted in consistence with the paradigm of a positive and normative development of sexuality in adolescence together with some psychoanalytic developmental theories. The study has revealed the typical feelings associated with the regularity of sexual subjectivity emergence in the process of growing self-awareness. The structure of the abstracted meta-theme called “Adolescence sexuality as part of an intensive I–Other experience” is presented to the reader in this publication. The material provides new data on the first conscious sexual experiences of adolescent girls, conceptualized as a “gaze situation”. The gaze situation is characterized by the interaction of four psychological micro-processes that stimulate sexual awareness and the integration of sexual self-experience. The author chooses to conceptualize these micro-processes as a) shifting reactions towards adolescent girls; b) the sense of personal singularity and uniqueness; c) the body becoming an alluring public object; d) striving to repeat the pleasurable experience of being looked at. Two additional themes were discussed as features of the intense I–Other experience related to the growing heterosexual sexual awareness: a) the Other should be a person outside the family, b) the Other should be a person of the opposite sex. Despite some limitations of the study, its findings confine the importance of intersubjective experiences with the other sex to the development of sexual selfhood in adolescence.

Group Morality and Forms of Life

In this paper, I attempt to establish connections between the pragmatist philosophical tradition and the later philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein. I argue that among these connections is the affinity between John Dewey’s account of the development of group morality as articulated in his early work and Wittgenstein’s admittedly vague concept, ‘form of life.’ I argue that this affinity is evident in that both are dependent on inter-subjective experience. Moreover, both Dewey’s account of the development of group morality and Wittgenstein’s concept of form of life suggests an intimate relationship between the individual and the community. I argue further that both Dewey’s account of group morality and Wittgenstein’s form of life concept hold that there is a significant influence of inherited norms, conventions, traditions, etc., on the development of the individual and her conduct in a variety of social interactions. I go on to raise and address potential and anticipated criticisms. In this section I take what I consider to be the most penetrating of the potential criticisms of the arguments presented in this paper: that Dewey and Wittgenstein direct their analyses at different issues (the former directs his analysis toward group moral development and social issues, while the latter directs his toward linguistic activity and its grounding social context), that Dewey focuses much of his attention on moral agency, whereas Wittgenstein is more concerned with what might be called epistemological issues, and finally that my treatment of the form of life concept is incomplete in that I spend a roughly proportionate amount of time discussing related concepts: language games, meaning as use, and, to a lesser extent, rule- following. I respond to these criticisms in turn by arguing that a careful reading of these aspects of each philosopher’s work circumvents such criticisms. The goal of this paper is to contribute to the growing literature on connections between Wittgenstein’s philosophy and the Pragmatist tradition. The subject matter might also be a contribution to the history of philosophy and possibly have implications for epistemology. There is also the hope that in establishing commonalities between the philosophies of Wittgenstein and Dewey one can provide an interpretation of some of the more vague concepts in Wittgenstein’s philosophy, prompting further discussion on these concepts. Finally, this research might pave the way for further research into connections among different aspects of Dewey’s and Wittgenstein’s philosophies. This paper is a first step toward a study of a much larger scope and should not be taken as conclusive.

Potential Space: Creativity, Resistance, and Resiliency in the Face of Racism

An amended version of Winnicott's concept of potential space is used to depict and understand the creativity, resilience, and resistance of African Americans facing the pervasive realities of social oppression, marginalization, and alienation linked to white racism. In particular, I argue that familial-communal potential space functions to confirm, secure, and maintain subjective and intersubjective experiences of being persons-unique, valued, inviolable, and agentic subjects-over and against the depersonalization of racism.

Theorizing leadership authenticity: A Sartrean perspective

Authenticity, a growing area of interest in leadership studies, is an important concept within existentialist thinking. Currently it is largely untheorized. Here the concept is examined using Sartre’s work. Current literature implies authenticity as relating to an ‘inner’ or ‘true’ self which existentialist thinking rejects, opening the way for a different approach to theorizing authenticity. There is a need to consider context, and subjective and inter-subjective experience to understand and to practice authentic existential leadership.

The Mutual Development of Intersubjectivity and Metacognitive Capacity in the Psychotherapy for Persons with Schizophrenia

While cognitive behavioral approaches have been shown to help some individuals with schizophrenia, these approaches may be limited when working with patients with impairments in the metacognitive abilities required to form complex and integrated representations of themselves and others. In response, this paper explores the possibility that a key to working with patients with rela- tively impaired self-reflectivity lies in explicitly focusing on a patient's intersubjective experience within psycho- therapy. We offer theoretical and empirical support for the assertion that the tolerance and capacity for intersubjec- tivity is a basis for the development of self-reflectivity in general. We also explore how the fostering of intersub- jective processes in psychotherapy might enable some patients to form more complex ideas about themselves and so better ward off delusions in the face of the challenges of daily life. To illustrate these principles we present the case of a patient with tenaciously held delusions and limited capacity for self-reflection. We discuss when and how the therapist's awareness and verbalization of intersubjective processes within session allowed her and the patient to develop more complex and consensually valid ideas about him as a being in the world, which then assisted the patient to achieve improvements in a number of domains in his life.

Empathy and second-person methodology

How the phenomenology of empathy in Husserl and beyond and the second-person approach of cognition are able to mutually enrich and constrain each other? Whereas the intersubjective empathy is limited to face-to-face inter-individual relational experiences or, when socially embedded, results a non-individualized understanding of others in general, the second person approach of cognition opens the way for a plural relational yet individualized understanding of the other. I would like to show in this paper how the integration of both phenomenological and cognitive fields paves the way for the more encompassing description of intersubjective experience as a “relational multiplicity,” which I will ultimately describe through the empirical practice of an emergency psychiatric unit.