It has become a truism to say that Freud was steeped in a Cartesian worldview that
split subject and object, and for that reason analysis has historically seen the
“intrapsychic” as its subject matter. To redress this imbalance, many today, especially
those whose analytic predilections may be categorized as “relational,” advocate an
integration of the “intrapsychic” and the “interpersonal.” Despite this recognition of the
importance of the interpersonal world, such a view accepts uncritically the existence of
an “intrapsychic” realm somehow separated from the world that must be joined to it. The
thesis of this chapter is that the very assumption of an intrapsychic realm has no basis in
the structure of human experience, and this recognition shifts the nature of
psychoanalytic therapy in significant ways.
The alternative is to be found in the phenomenological philosophy founded by
Husserl which sees that all experience is “of” the world. The nature of human experience
does not warrant giving “the intrapsychic” ontological status. Heidegger added to
Husserl’s insight that “consciousness of” is a way of being, and that Being-in-the-world
is the uniquely human way of relating that can only be captured by reference to an
experiencing subject.
In addition, developmental research indicates that the child’s self forms in response
to the mother-child relationship and especially the gaze of the mothering figure. The
evidence from mother-infant interaction is overwhelming that the self does not come to
fruition without another who recognizes the child’s potential ways of experiencing and
brings them to form.
This shift in the conception of human being has decisive theoretical, clinical, and
social implications. From a theoretical perspective, the patient’s fantasies and dreams,
normally accorded the ontological category of the “intrapsychic,” are modes of
responding to and creating worlds of experience. The analytic process embraces such
psychic phenomena as ways of being to be experienced and appreciated in their own right
before their interpretation can be fully meaningful.
In addition, viewing the human condition as Being-in-the-world implies the
elimination of all reified concepts from analytic theory. The concept of “the unconscious”
is one such analytic concept that is reformulated to fit with psychoanalysis as a science of
the subjective. In addition, concentration on experience as it is lived means that the
patient’s psychic patterns are seen not only for what they now are, but also for what they
might become. In this way, the future enters into the analytic process.
Finally, because human being is inherently related to the world, self and culture are
inextricably bound. The analytic model built on Being-in-the World returns to the
Aristotelian view that self can emerge only within a community. The relationship
between patient and analyst is infused with often-unnoticed unconscious cultural
assumptions that, if unseen, may impede the analytic process.
Examples of an analytic case conducted according to the model of Being-in-the-
World is used to illustrate the conceptualization presented.