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Intersubjectivity
Michael A. Forrester
University of Kent
Abstract. The issue of what might constitute intersubjective relations
during infancy and early childhood remains something of a puzzle within
and beyond psychology. This paper considers whether the psychoanalytic
concept of projective identification might supplement or enrich theoretical
efforts in this domain. Following introductory comments on distinctive
characteristics of Merleau-Pontys commentary on intersubjectivity, attention turns to psychoanalytic assumptions and presuppositions underpinning
projective identification. Complementary and contrastive themes are drawn
out, specifically those which highlight alternative metaphysical positions
taken up within these approaches. Discussion touches on the processes
involved in the emergence of projective identification and what implications the concept may have for contemporary theories of intersubjectivity
in developmental psychology.
Key Words: Merleau-Pontys theory of intersubjectivity, projective
identification
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We need to distinguish between at least two meanings of intersubjectivity, one which focuses on the body-subject (inter)acting on the world,
another which signifies interpersonal relations. As Barral (1993) comments, there is a basic relationship between the two meanings which is
correlative, not synonymous. Merleau-Ponty uses the term intersubjective,
but in doing so points out that intersubjective really means objective, or,
to quote Barral:
An object is intersubjective when it is known by several subjects in the
same waythat is, when it is a shared experience. The perceived object is
known to a number of subjects not as an idea, but as a concrete thing.
There is a relation between the body-subject and the thing (object); thus,
intersubjective means common to body-subjects. When an object is thus
known to several subjects, it appears to be objectively true; it is intersubjective, that is to say, objective. (p. 158)
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Through this process, described in the literature as the mothers reverie, the
infant learns that his/her distress is not disastrous, and by internalizing the
containing function of the mother (through introjection or identification)
s/he gains an internal source of strength and well-being.
Although these definitions serve as a useful outline of projective identification, it is important to note that the concept is underpinned by a
particular theory of the drives and the associated manner in which phantasy
relates to primitive elements in the human psyche. Phantasy is a central
aspect of Kleins understanding of unconscious processes. We need to
recognize the difference between the term phantasy in the folk psychological sense of unrealistic, dream-like and amorphous aspects of the mind,
and the meaning of phantasy for projective identification, that is, as a central
component or aspect of the human psyche out of which symbolization,
thinking and associated cognitive processes emerge. Unlike Freud, who
considered phantasy, especially phantasy which is partly conscious, as an
expression of wish fulfilment, Klein considers phantasy and the unconscious
as interdependent phenomena, phantasy synonymous with unconscious
thought. With regard to how phantasy begins to take shape or express itself
in the infants early life, Hinshelwood (1989) draws attention to one way of
thinking about phantasy and early development when he comments:
An unconscious phantasy is a belief in the activity of concretely felt
internal objects. This is a difficult concept to grasp. A somatic sensation
tugs along with it a mental experience that is interpreted as a relationship
with an object that wishes to cause that sensation, and is loved or hated by
the subject according to whether the object is well-meaning or has evil
intentions (i.e., a pleasant or unpleasant sensation). (pp. 3435)
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source but to search for ways of reducing the tension . . . clamouring for
satisfaction (pp. 1415). We might also say, following Lacan (1973) in
what is sometimes described as the project doomed to failure, that in the
infants unconscious efforts at overcoming the originary lack s/he is
compelled to develop phantasy, subsequently becoming part and parcel of
imagining that what is demanded by the Other is what is required. It is
phantasy that is the basis for our imaginings of the Desire of the Other. To
quote Green (2000b):
This formulation may become clearer if, in place of the drive, we put the
infant, and in place of the object we put the mother and/or the breast. We
will then be obliged to recognize that, in order for the system to work,
shared aims must exist: the desire for satisfaction in the child being echoed
by the mothers desire that he or she be satisfied. It may be added that
satisfaction achieves two things at once by incorporating both that the
object provides, and, by metonymic and metaphorical transference, the
object itself. . . . to this description one may add that the act of incorporation not only eliminates the waiting intrinsic to dissatisfaction, but creates
satisfaction through phantasy. (p. 15)
The view of the unconscious in this account is certainly not what one might
call positive and infused with an ongoing forward-focused intentionality. We
need to remember that the Freudian conception of mind is of an entity
(conscious/unconscious) split against itself. The instinct-derived demands of
the unconscious constantly seek to undermine whatever might constitute
ego-identity as it develops, and beyond. The somewhat insidious and everpresent destructive-drive orientation of the dynamic unconscious (the
Kleinian life/death drive contrast) provides the backdrop to an ever-present
and enduring sense of anxiety in the organism.
Highlighting a specifically intersubjective reading of projective identification requires some consideration of Bion (1962) and the container
contained model of early experience, one which parallels elements of
Winnicotts (1987) concept of maternal holding and the good-enough
mother. It is the idea of the mother being a container for the infants
projections that is most associated with Bion (1962), who also employed the
notion of normal projective identification as the basic building block for
generating thoughts out of experiences and perceptions. His model of
containing and the alpha function is probably best seen as an elaborate
attempt to link together the intersubjective process of reverie (where the
mother is able to contain projected identifications emanating from the infant)
and the containing of the infants intolerable experiences through her
transformative words and actions. Symington (1986) provides an apt comment on the mothers reverie and containment, noting:
But what does it really mean when we say that the mother is able to
contain these projections? Negatively it means that she does not herself
become so depressed that she is unable to respond to her baby, or that she
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fears her baby, or that she is disgusted by the baby or envious of the baby
. . . . now if the baby gets [such] a negative response, he feels that he is too
much for his mother and himself internalizes a bad sense of himself.
Positively, on the other hand, the presence of reverie in the mother enables
her to tune in to her baby so that when he makes gestures, looks at her,
gurgles to her she is in turn able to respond with gestures which meet his.
The baby feels comforted and satisfied. That is what we mean . . . when we
say that the babys anxieties are contained and returned to him in modified
form. (p. 291)
Hinshelwood (1989) describes Bions model as a psychic structuring process somehow analogous to the mathematical concept of a function identifiable from the behaviour of variables. Bions (1962) distinction between
alpha function and beta elements meant the separation of elements
of perception into those usable for thinking and dreaming (alpha), and
others, unconsciousness and unassimilable raw data, which he called betaelements (Hinshelwood, 1989, p. 190). In the mothers state of reverie she
performs this initial separation through her own use of her alpha function.
Bion (1962) again:
The mothers capacity for reverie is here considered as inseparable from
the content for clearly one depends on the other. If the feeding mother
cannot allow reverie or if the reverie is allowed but is not associated with
love for the child or its father this fact will be communicated to the infant
even though incomprehensible to the infant. . . . The term reverie may be
applied to almost any content. I wish to reserve it only for such content as
is suffused with love or hate. Using it in this restricted sense reverie is that
state of mind which is open to the reception of any objects from the loved
object and is therefore capable of reception of the infants projective
identifications whether they are felt by the infant to be good or bad. In
short, reverie is a factor of the mothers alpha-function. (p. 36)
To some extent, projective identification might be interpreted as an intersubjective theory of emotion and thinking, and of all the post-Kleinians,
Bions (1962) model appears the most intersubjective, that is, in MerleauPontys interpersonal sense of the term. However, Bion also maintained that
projective identification represents an omnipotent phantasy where disliked or
unwanted parts of oneself can be expelled and projected onto, and into,
another object (person). His emphasis on the notion of containercontained
figuring intersubjectivity nevertheless remains resonant with Freuds original focus on the role of constitutional factors in the organism, as indicated
by these comments on the infants tolerance of frustration:
An infant endowed with marked capacity for toleration of frustration
might survive the ordeal of a mother incapable of reverie and therefore
incapable of supplying its mental needs. At the other extreme an infant
markedly incapable of tolerating frustration cannot survive without breakdown even the experience of projective identification with a mother
capable of reverie; nothing less than unceasing breast feeding would serve
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and that is not possible through lack of appetite if for no other reason.
(Bion, 1962, pp. 3637)
Bick suggests that the baby has to struggle for the capacity to introject, and
that this achievement of both infant and mother is related to embodiment:
The stage of primal splitting and idealization of self and object can now be
seen to rest on this earlier process of containment of self and object by their
respective skins (p. 484). Embodiment presupposes containment and the
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establishment of boundaries, and it would seem that, before the infant can do
anything at all, it has to experience an object in such a way that it intuits the
concept of a space that can hold things. Hinshelwoods (1989) summary of
the significance of skin is worth quoting in full:
The skin: The infant, in gaining the nipple in his mouth, has an experience
of acquiring such an objectan object which closes the hole in the
boundary that the mouth seems to represent. With this first introjection
comes the sense of a space into which objects can be introjected. Through
her observations of the infant, it became clear to Bick that once he has
introjected such a primary containing object, he identifies it with his skin
or to put it another way, skin contact stimulates the experience (unconscious phantasy) of an object containing the parts of his personality as
much as the nipple in the mouth does. (p. 427)
Thus a unified space is created where before there was none. What we are
considering in these very early moments of life is said to be the infants
unconscious. Alongside there is the significance of the organisms earliest
passive experience, which itself gives rise to the possibility of the creation
of an internal space. Only with the existence of an internal psychologically
enclosing space can the capacity to introject emerge. It is on the basis of this
initial introjection that projection and projective identification can then
occur. At the same time the whole process is engendered by the inherent and
chronic anxieties arising from withinthe very process of splitting and
projection enabling the infant to disperse the destructive forces of the death
instinct. As Klein (1946) put it:
I found that concurrently with the greedy and devouring internalisation of
the objectfirst of all the breastthe ego in varying degrees fragments
itself and its objects, and in this way achieves a dispersal of the destructive
impulses and of internal persecutory anxiety. (p. 23)
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internal destructive elements by partially fragmenting itself and thus dissipating such forces. In part this is resolved in that it is the sensation of skin,
the world as flesh, metaphorically and literally, which provides the conditions for the production of unconscious phantasy, the phantasy that a
bounded space has come into existence. For now, we might say that, in
contrast to Merleau-Pontys intersubjective phenomenology, the intersubjectivity that is interdependent with projective identification is by definition interpersonally focused prior to any selfworld/object orientation. The
drive(s) seeking outward expression moves towards not the world of things
but to a human (object).
Implications for Contemporary Theories of Intersubjectivity
We move finally to three theories of intersubjectivity and consider whether
the concept, and associated presuppositions, of projective identification
might further extend or inform the theoretical framework each inhabits. In
turn, we shall consider Sterns (1985) psychoanalytically informed theory,
Trevarthen and Aitkens (2001) conception from developmental psychology
and finally, Merleau-Pontys formulation of intersubjectivity expressed in
such work as Wynn (1997), Barral (1983) and Mallin (1989).2 With regard
to the intersubjective theory of Stern (1985), we can make a number of
points which seem to distinguish his theory from more traditional psychoanalytic theorists who are often more cautious about the specifics of the preverbal subjective life. There is considerable focus on what Stern terms
invariant self-awareness, a form of non-reflexive consciousness said to
emerge as a result of the infants sensory-motor-affective-perceptual matrix
of organizationa kind of internal emerging self-consciousness which
arises as a by-product of the organisms ability to recognize distinctions
between consistent and inconsistent patterns of experience. This brings
together the realist ideas of the perceptual psychologist James Gibson
(1979)particularly the idea of the affordanceresearch findings from
ethology and developmental psychology (e.g. Trevarthen & Hubley, 1978)
and certain elements of object-relations theoryparticularly Winnicott
(1974)all alongside Sterns (1985) idea of affect attunement. This he
describes as:
. . . the performance of behaviours that express the quality of feeling of a
shared affect state without imitating the exact behavioural expression of the
inner state. . . . imitation is the predominant way [parents] teach external
forms and attunement the predominant way to commune with or indicate
sharing of internal states. Imitation renders form; attunement renders
feeling . . . they seem to occupy two ends of a spectrum. (p. 142)
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Concluding Comment
This paper set out to examine whether there are any fruitful or realizable
theoretical openings from placing together Merleau-Pontys views on intersubjectivity and the psychoanalytic concept of projective identification.
These concluding points serve by way of a short commentary. With regard
to the actual processes involved in the emergence of projective identification, it seems to matter a great deal how we are to understand Bicks (1968)
description of those very fragmentary components said to precede ego
formation and the initial construction of an internal space. Within MerleauPontys philosophy it is hard to detect any subsidiary issue which indicates
there is an existential problematic underpinning the very fact that fragmentation is an originating issue for the human psyche. Again we are reminded, as
indicated above, that there are two contrasting metaphysical positions at
work here: one focused solely on intentionality, movement and activity (on
and in the world); the other where the human condition is essentially one of
potential disjunction and disintegration with an associated sense of enduring
potential trauma, or at least ever-present anxiety. For one, the infants
earliest experiences are described as a body-subject fascinated by the
unique opportunity of floating in Being with another life; for the other, the
infant is required to develop the phantasy of the internal object so as to
protect him- or herself from ever-present potentially destructive elements
from the unconscious. To some psychoanalytic theorists, Merleau-Pontys
later philosophy may give the impression of articulating what they would
term the unconscious, but it turns out to be quite different from the Freudian
conception. The concept of projective identification carries with it a set of
associated terms and ideas, particularly the significance of the drive and the
object, which together call into question whether we can talk sensibly about
infant intersubjectivity.
It would also seem that Merleau-Pontys intersubjectivity is concerned
with subjectworld first, before consideration moves to the intersubjectivity
of selfOther. It just so happens that his version of subjectworld intersubjectivity is deeply anti-individualistic and non-centrifugal with respect to
consciousness, given, as Descombes (1980) points out, that the programme
of this phenomenology was to describe precisely what lies between the for
itself and the in itself, between consciousness and the thing (object). At all
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By way of summing up, this essay has brought into focus something of
the conceptual background of Merleau-Pontys theory of intersubjectivity
and highlighted the importance of recognizing different senses of the
concept. One observation that emerges when we consider projective identification alongside intersubjectivity is the metaphysical contrast between a
more positive-oriented conception of embodied infant intentionality in
Merleau-Ponty and the more existentially problematic psychoanalytically
informed intersubjectivity presupposed by the idea of projective identification. Interestingly, the conceptual framework found within child psychoanalysis appears to offer more theoretical promise as regards understanding
something of the detail of the earliest moments of the infants life. Whether
one orients towards psychoanalytic or phenomenological presuppositions,
intersubjectivity pre-figures a theory of the subject and the question of
separateness and individuation demands theoretical consideration. Contemporary theories of intersubjectivity in developmental psychology for the
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most part appear to evade this particular question or instead orient towards
the pre-eminence of those classic psychological entities, the functions of
cognition, that were the subject of Merleau-Pontys original critique over
fifty years ago.
Notes
1. This sentence as in original quotation (Merleau-Ponty, 1968, p. 264).
2. For reasons of space we leave aside, yet recognize, other conceptions of
intersubjectivity, for example ethnomethodologically inspired intersubjectivity.
This is, by definition, a members method, or set of methodic procedures oriented
to by participants. Within the conversation analytic framework it would seem,
though, that we cannot speak of pre-linguistic intersubjectivity, given that, in
respect of the conditions necessary for attributing accountability, the infant does
not possess the ability to produce a methodic method. With reference to adult
adult intersubjectivity, Schegloff (1992) describes intersubjectivity in terms of the
procedural infrastructure of interaction, emphasizing the technicalities of what is
known in conversation analysis as third-position repair, essentially descriptions of
methodical procedures that people orient to and produce to indicate that they
share an understanding of their ongoing dialogue (or not).
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