Intersubjective Field

the analytic enterprise as centrally involving an effort on the part of the analyst to track the dialectical movement of individual subjectivity (of analyst and analysand) and intersubjectivity (the jointly created unconscious life of the analytic pair—the analytic third)

Ogden defines the intersubjective field operationally as the ‘analytic third’ — the co-created unconscious life of the analytic pair — positioning its dialectical tracking as the central task of psychoanalysis.

Ogden, Thomas, The Analytic Third: Implications for Psychoanalytic Theory and Technique, 1994thesis

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projective identification involves a type of partial collapse of the dialectical movement of subjectivity and intersubjectivity, resulting in the subjugation (of the individual subjectivities of analyst and analysand) by the analytic third

Ogden theorises projective identification as a pathological contraction of the intersubjective field in which the co-created third overwhelms and subjugates the individual subjectivities of both parties.

Ogden, Thomas, The Analytic Third: Implications for Psychoanalytic Theory and Technique, 1994thesis

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the unconscious dialectical movement of individual subjectivity and intersubjectivity in the analytic setting… No thought, feeling, or sensation can be

Ogden insists that every experience in the analytic setting is contextualised by the intersubjective field, such that no thought or sensation of the analyst can be understood in isolation from the co-created third.

Ogden, Thomas, The Analytic Third: Implications for Psychoanalytic Theory and Technique, 1994thesis

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the analyst’s reveries are personal psychological events, I view them as unconscious intersubjective constructions generated by analyst and analysand

Ogden extends the intersubjective field concept to the analyst’s reverie, arguing that even the most private and mundane mental content of the analyst is in fact a co-creation of the analytic dyad.

Ogden, Thomas, Reverie and Interpretation, 1997thesis

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Human beings have a need as deep as hunger and thirst to establish intersubjective constructions (including projective identifications), in order to find an exit from unending, futile wanderings in their own internal object world

Ogden argues that the drive to establish an intersubjective field is a fundamental human need, not merely a therapeutic technique, grounding the concept in a broad theory of psychic necessity.

Ogden, Thomas, The Analytic Third: Implications for Psychoanalytic Theory and Technique, 1994supporting

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experiences in and of the analytic third often generate a quality of intimacy between patient and analyst that has ‘all the sense of real’… Such experiences involve feelings of enlivening humor, camaraderie, playfulness, compassion

Ogden identifies the generative, vitalising dimension of the intersubjective field, noting that analytic third experiences can constitute a patient’s first encounter with healthy object relatedness.

Ogden, Thomas, The Analytic Third: Implications for Psychoanalytic Theory and Technique, 1994supporting

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Transcendental subjectivity is a revealed subjectivity, revealed to itself and to others, and is for that reason an intersubjectivity

Merleau-Ponty establishes the phenomenological foundation for the intersubjective field by arguing that transcendental subjectivity is constitutively intersubjective — selfhood is only disclosed through its necessary openness to others.

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, Phenomenology of Perception, 1962thesis

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the infinite complexity of the interplay of the unconscious life of the analysand and that of the analyst and to the ever-changing unconscious constructions generated in the

Ogden characterises the intersubjective field as a continuously shifting, dynamically complex unconscious construction, emphasising its processual and non-static nature.

Ogden, Thomas, Reverie and Interpretation, 1997supporting

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HUSSERL AND THE IDEA OF INTERSUBJECTIVITY Edmund Husserl was born in Moravia in 1859… he became increasingly concerned with the relationship between psychology and philosophy

McGilchrist locates Husserl’s concept of intersubjectivity within the historical emergence of right-hemisphere-aligned philosophy, contextualising the intersubjective field within a broader neurological and epistemological argument.

McGilchrist, Iain, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, 2009supporting

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Affectivo-emotive instances form the basis of intersubjective communication; the reality that is called the communication of consciousnesses could more correctly be called the communicati

Simondon grounds intersubjective communication in affectivo-emotive processes, proposing that what is ordinarily termed the meeting of consciousnesses is more accurately understood as a transindividual affective resonance.

Simondon, Gilbert, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, 2020supporting

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my flesh appears as a body among bodies only to the extent that I am myself an other among all the others, in the apprehension of a common nature, woven, as Husserl says, out of the network of intersubjectivity

Ricoeur, following and critically extending Husserl, argues that embodied selfhood is constituted through the network of intersubjectivity — one’s own flesh becomes legible only within a shared intersubjective field.

Ricoeur, Paul, Oneself as Another, 1992supporting

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interactive field, 73, 97–98… interactional dialectic, 4, 38–39, 93, 96–98

Wiener’s index entries for ‘interactive field’ and ‘interactional dialectic’ signal the Jungian tradition’s parallel conceptualisation of the analytic relationship as a mutually constituting intersubjective space.

Wiener, Jan, The Therapeutic Relationship: Transference, Countertransference, and the Making of Meaning, 2009supporting

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each being becomes reciprocal with respect to itself to the extent that it becomes reciprocal with respect to the others. Intra-individual integration is reciprocal with transindividual integration

Simondon argues that individual self-integration and transindividual (intersubjective) integration are mutually conditioning processes, offering a structural ontology that supports the depth-psychological claim that the intersubjective field is constitutive of selfhood.

Simondon, Gilbert, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, 2020supporting

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It is this informing of my perceptions by the evident perceptions and sensations of other bodily entities that establishes, for me

Abram extends the intersubjective field beyond the human dyad to encompass all sentient organisms, grounding intersubjectivity in the mutual informing of embodied perceptions across species.

Abram, David, The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World, 1996aside

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There exists in the newborn infant a natural intermodal coupling between self and other, one that does not involve a confused experience

Gallagher’s account of neonatal intermodal coupling provides an empirical, developmental substrate for the intersubjective field, locating its origins in the innate bodily resonance between infant and other prior to reflective self-awareness.

Gallagher, Shaun, How the Body Shapes the Mind, 2005aside

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