Presenter:
Jill T. Gentile, PhD
Chair:
Edwin L. Hersch, MA, MD, FRCP(C)
Discussant:
Barry Magid, MD
Self Psychology Page | 20th Conference Program
Abstract
This paper revisits the idea of an inherent, a priori developmental trajectory, lost in the shuffle amidst psychoanalysis' turn towards a postmodernist ethic which rejects the idea of universals and "grand narratives''. It proposes that the ascendance within psychoanalysis of a relational paradigm and hermeneutic epistemology offers a means for illuminating, not only the distinctly personal patterns by which we organize experience, but for accessing the shared and universal patterns by which subjective experience evolves. It is suggested that sequential patterns in the evolution of subjective experience may provide the basis for inferring the existence of a universal and abstract deep structure, akin to ideas originally posited by Chomsky (1957, 1972) and applied to psychoanalysis by theorists Ogden (1986; 1990) and Slavin and Kriegman (1992).
How to listen for experiential manifestations of deep structure is considered and clinical examples are described. While such clinical illustrations must be viewed as only very tentative evidence for the idea of deep structure, the hypothesis of a deep structure may offer psychoanalysis a means by which it can integrate both its recent identity as a hermeneutic enterprise as well as its original scientific mission.