James Barnes, MSc.

, MA

Psychoanalysis as Áskēsis : dissolving the

Cartesian subject

Freud’s Cartesian assumptions and ana-lysis

Psychoanalysis has a bad rap. While the factionous APA and the proponents of ‘evidence-based
practice’ have certainly had their part to play in this, the broader reason is due to its perception as
the embodiment of a hierarchical, patriarchal mode of relating – particularly so within the current
cultural climate. It is essentially seen as the bald, white man, administering reason-medicine
from his lofty, omniscient perch to the confused and resistant patient below, with little to no
value put on the client’s experience of their own psyche.

Now, I am not going to argue against this image; in fact, I am going to argue for it, though with
one caveat: while by most accounts this image is not too far away from the reality of Freudian
psychoanalysis - and while it is true that there are still a lot of bald, white analysts – much has
changed in psychoanalytic theory and practice, and indeed dramatically so. One, and I will argue
important, way of characterizing this shift is from psychoanalysis as theōria to psychoanalysis as
áskēsis, which is to say, from a procedure of rational enquiry and the determination of ’truth’ to
a practice of embodied transformation. Before we come to that, however, let us first look behind
this image of the original mode of psychoanalysis, in order to understand our starting point.

With respect to this, it would not be entirely unfair to characterize the original Freudian
psychoanalysis as a form of Cartesian Correctionism, albeit one dealing with the unconscious.
The chief goal and process of the analysis was to unearth unconscious beliefs, desires, and
wishes in the subject that conflicted with their Ego, and it’s corollary, the shared world of
experience. The aim of this procedure was to effectively force a realization of their ultimate
commensuration, which is to say, to have them meet up and make sense of each other, and in
doing so, release the client from whatever symptom had emerged as a compromise for the
contradiction. Thus, psychoanalysis was in the business of correcting subjective errors with
 James Barnes, MSc., MA

regards to an objectively true world, something which derived its power in terms of a doctrine of
truth-as-cure.

In the analytic scene in which this procedure took place, the supposedly objective and impartial
analyst made use of his disengaged, reflective awareness - his ‘even hovering attention’, as it
was called - to scrutinize and investigate sequences of thoughts, impressions and ideas related to
the person over-there. The psychoanalyst’s proficiency lay in his ability to unearth these
contradictions, isolate discrepancies in associative chains, recognize themes and characters in the
patients dreams and transference, and so on. His proficiency also lay in the ability to relate these
data to the appropriate theory, thereby arriving at a course of action. As such, the skills and tools
at his disposal were almost exclusively mental - rational and logical - employed in the service of
hypothesis, testing and discovery. This was analysis as ana-lysis (root: to loosen, divide, cut
apart).

Freud, of course, was very enthusiastic about psychoanalysis being seen as an empirical science.
Indeed, the raison d’etre of the Freudian metapsychology and method was an attempt to explain
the psyche in the terms of scientific materialism1. As such, perhaps the most obvious and
substantial assumption that betrayed his membership of the Cartisean club was his unambiguous
philosophical commitment to a psychology based on subjects and objects and their
representational mediation, even thought he was, by his own admission, dealing with a
multivalent and paradoxical unconscious that resisted any easy formulation in these terms2

While I am sure that many a Freudian would scoff and chuckle at this simplistic characterization
of an in fact hugely complex and in many cases subtle corpus of knowledge and technique, it is
nevertheless justifiable I would argue, to therefore think of this original mode of psychoanalysis
as a Cartiseanism par excellence. Indeed, one might be forgiven for believing that Descartes
would have in fact enthusiastically approved of it.

As we have mentioned, however, this picture and mode of psychoanalysis has drastically
changed, in some quarters at least. The evolution of this change has, in fact, a long history dating
back to the 1940’s (which will be touched on below) but it is a history that culminated in
relatively recent times into what was dubbed psychanalysis’s ‘relational turn’ (Beebe &
Lachmann, 2003). In this new mode of psychoanalysis, the intra-psychic worlds of subjects qua
subjects in relation to the objective world receded into the background, and the ontological
ambiguity of relational-intersubjective dynamics - dynamics involving not just client but analyst
too - took center stage. In addition to this, the reliance on the abstract operations of mind as tool

1 This is evidenced really through Freuds writings, but particular in his “project for a scientific
psychology” written at the inception of psychoanalysis in 1895.
2 He was, for example, led to posit unconscious intentionality, which flatly contradicted how

intentionality had been defined, and to hypothesize an homunculus agency to translate the
incommensurate languages of the Id and Edo and explain the transition between
unconsciousness and consciousness of any given psychic ‘object’.
 James Barnes, MSc., MA

and theory as guide fall out of favor and was replaced with the skills and capacities of the
analysts phenomenological-perceptual explorations. A brief history of this shift will be outlined
below:

From the person over-there to the inter-personal

It is fair, and indeed important, to say that Freud’s mature theory was not particularly interested
in ‘the other’. After abandoning his first theory - the ‘seduction theory’ - he became solely
interested in the subjective representations of the other as they related to the internally
determined drives. His subsequent theorizing was, as such, almost exclusively concerned with
the development and functioning of the intra-psychic. This focus, however, began to shift after
the reality and importance of inter-personally derived phenomena and processes (object-
relations) were recognized as crucial in explaining psychological development and pathology.
These object-relations were in fact first identified by Freud himself, albeit in nascent from, but
were taken on board in earnest by his follower Melanie Klien, a crucial figure in the inception of
the object-relations school that followed.

Klein and her follower Bion, who was very influential in his own right, came to understand
object-relations as paramount in child development and consequently also in the explanation and
amelioration of the adult psyche in analysis. Most importantly, the

process of “projective identification” - a process by which the subject identifies with

(internalizes) the projection of the other (the object), thereby, in some crucial respect,
experiences it as their own experience - was a crucial advance. As opposed to the disengaged
appropriation of parts of one another (projection and introjection), this described a process
between people.

However, the term ‘object’ in object-relations was in fact quite appropriate, as the role of the
other was understood by Klein as simply serving an external function, as a disembodied
repository in and through which processes that made use of this function worked themselves out.
The other was considered ‘an object’ in this sense because Klein, following Freud, was solely
focused on a theory of intra-psychic functioning, with regards to which the proper and natural
subject of analysis were representations of the other and not the other themselves.
 James Barnes, MSc., MA

With Winnicott, however, a new and qualitatively different picture emerged. A pediatrician by
trade, Winnicott understood the development of the infant to be inextricably bound up with the
personhood of the mother whose role in that development was not just to be a repository of this
process but also to provide “holding” and regulation with her own being, something which came
to be understood as integral to the proper functioning of the process. In his paper ‘The theory of
the parent-child relationship,’ these processes, he writes:

“take place in a complex psychological field, determined by the awareness and the empathy of
the mother… The term ‘living with’ implies object relationships, and the emergence of the infant
from the state of being merged with the mother, or his perception of objects as external to the
self.” (Winnicott, 1960; p. 4)

There are two important things in this. Firstly, this mother-environment, which includes the
mother’s feelings and moods, was understood by Winnicott as inextricably bound to the process
of the infant’s development (and, as such, of the client’s too). Secondly, he is suggesting that this
interpersonal process is the very means by which objects come to be perceived of as “outside the
self”. As such, there is a radical change here: the representational world of the separate subject
was now starting to be understood as secondary, and a non-representational, self/other
undifferentiated process – the embodied ‘living-through’ with another - seen as primary.3

In terms of practice and the role of the psychoanalyst, Winnicott believed that the feelings and
responses the analyst experienced in relation to client - their countertransference- was not ‘noise’
to be excluded, as it was for Freud, nor understood as data used simply to gauge the intrapsychic
processes of the client, as it was for Klien. Winnicott revolutionized this. He understood
countertransference not so much as a producing of something, but as a pull into a story about the
client, a story in which the therapist-other was a character and participant. What was of primary
importance in this regard was who the therapist felt they became moment-to-moment in relation
to the client while embroiled in the interpersonal dynamic. While this of course gave a unique
embodied resonance with the client's world, more importantly it offered up the opportunity for
the analyst to (judiciously) participate in the client’s psyche – indeed, in a certain respect, as
their psyche.

3 We can see here the similarity with Heidegger's account of being-in-the-world. HIs use of
‘living with’ is reminiscent of Heidegger’s pre-reflective ‘being-with' the other.
 James Barnes, MSc., MA

The client as such was invited to actually relive the dynamics of past relationships with the
analyst as they showed up between them. This participation - while reflected on and ‘digested’ at
opportune junctures – became for Winnicott the meat of the psychoanalytic process. He came to
view this reliving, in fact, as the key to any deep, characterological change. More importantly, so
far as the development of the modern relational-intersubjective mode of psychoanalysis is
concerned, this was not understood as a change of the persons relation to themselves per se,
understood intra-psychicly in other words, but chiefly as a fostering and growing of
intersubjectivity, itself being considered ameliorative. Thus, we can see the beginnings of the
departure from the notion of cure-as-truth.

Winnicott made sense of the how and where of this reliving in terms of an entering into what he
called “transitional space”, a phenomenon describing an opening in which the
subjective/objective, self/other, distinctions blurred or dissolved. It was an essentially un-minded
place, and as such acting and responding took over the role that thinking and questioning had
had. His term for this was ‘play’, not in terms of games or joking around (not that these were
precluded, or even necessarily rare), but as describing a mode of interaction in which the
restrictions of, pretentions to, the ‘reality adapted’ ego became suspended. For Winnicott, in this
space spontaneity and ‘aliveness’ ruled, and a developed ability to sense-into and feel what was
happening and what might need to happen was crucial.

Being-with and fields of experience.

While the self-psychology of Kohut, the interpersonal school of Sullivan and the field theory of
the Binswanger’s all had not significant roles in the formation of modern
relational/intersubjective psychoanalysis, it was Winnicott nevertheless who soared above all in
terms of influence and impact.

Most importantly, it was from Winnicott that it inherited the following: the notion of the
therapeutic encounter as primarily occupied with the culturing and unfoldment of
intersubjectivity; that interpretation (i.e. disengaged insight) was of secondary importance, at
best, to the actual living-through of the ‘internal drama’ externally between client and therapist;
and, finally, the notion that the dwelling and mood of the therapeutic scene were vital to the
disclosure in the first instance of the space in and through which the phenomena to be explored
 James Barnes, MSc., MA

emerged. As a result of this, we are now describing quite a different domain of experience to the
analysis of the person over-there. Because of this, to describe the phenomena that emerge in this
domain, I will employ the use of the term trans-subjective.

Since Winnicott’s time, of course, there have been a plethora of new perspectives on these basic
assumptions that have augmented, updated, and enrichened this mode of psychoanalysis. I will
touch on two key theorists only, however, with quite different orientations to the relational-
intersubjective modern to illustrate this and give subject matter to the ensuing discussion of
psychoanalysis as áskēsis.

Thomas Ogden, a very influential figure in contemporary psychoanalysis, developed a unique

conception of working in this mode as the working with(in) what he called

the “analytic third.” The analytic third, writes Ogden:

“is a creation of the analyst and analysand, and at the same time the analyst and analysand (qua
analyst and analysand) are created by the analytic third (there is no analyst, no analysand, and
no analysis in the absence of the third… (the third being something which is constituted by a)..
“myriad of intersubjective clinical facts.. whether they be the apparently self-absorbed
ramblings of his mind, bodily sensations that seemingly have nothing to do with the analysand,
or any other ‘analytic object’ inter-subjectively generated by the analytic pair.” (1994, p.16)

The third - a trans-subjective entity - and its vicissitudes were understood as constituted not only
by one’s subjectively embellished construction of the other, but also the objective construction of
oneself, so to speak, out of the others subjectivity - a characterization which more or less directly
followed from Winnicott. For Ogden, however, “the third”, as the name suggests, was something
more than this. In having some sense of an independent existence, it itself was the phenomenon
to be attuned to and courted. For Ogden, one chief, or perhaps preferred, channel through which
the ‘analytic third’ rendered itself a trans-subjective phenomenon was “reverie”. Reverie, as
Ogden conceptualizes it, is the analyst effectively allowing himself to ‘dream up’ — in his
fantasy, memories, desires and somatic preoccupations — content, which, while superficially his
own and related to events or perceptions of his past or present, were nevertheless, upon
phenomenological investigation, disclosed as being at root thematic characterizations of both the
clients unconscious and the unconscious dynamic between them. “Reveries”, Ogden writes:
 James Barnes, MSc., MA

“are not simply reflections of inattentiveness, narcissistic self-involvement, unresolved emotional

conflict, and the like; rather, this psychological activity represents symbolic and proto-symbolic
(sensation-based) forms given to the unarticulated (and often not yet felt) experience… as they
are taking form in the inter-subjectivity of the analytic pair (i.e. in the analytic third).” (1994;
p.11)

Understood in this way, we can see that we are now talking of psychoanalyst-as-tool - in this
case, as a kind of psyche-soma antenna - cultivated to be receptive to the calls and invitations of
‘the third’, and subject only subsequently to the phenomenological-perceptual exploration of the
analyst. Ogden’s version of psychoanalysis, in this regard, reveals something very important
about the nature of the relational-intersubjective mode in general: the analyst is at their most
beneficial when in a receptively attuned, intentional mode. Ogden, however, in some important
sense, stayed true to the meta-psychological underpinning of Klein and her followers, and as
such, did not see fit to emancipate these trans-subjective modes of experience from the older
framework of subjects and objects, preferring to understand them as constituting a special kind
of emergent property of the interaction.

Storolow & Atwood’s (1996) ‘Intersubjective theory,’ however, showing no such reluctance,
ventured to reformulate the very ontological basis of psyche in intersubjective terms. Influenced
by the Heideggerian understanding of Dasein as the pre-reflective, pre-cognitive, basis and
condition of the possibility of subjects and objects, they argued that intersubjectivity was not just
a feature or special kind of relational configuration or experience, as Ogden seems to have
thought, but the feature, or rather the ground, of mind itself. In giving a synopsis of their
intersubjective theory, Storolow & Atwood (1996) write:

“Intersubjectivity theory.. seeks to comprehend psychological phenomena not as products of

isolated intra-psychic mechanisms, but as forming at the interface of reciprocally interacting
worlds of experience...Intra-psychic determinism thus gives way to an unremitting
intersubjective contextualism. It is not the isolated individual mind, we have argued, but the
larger system created by the mutual interplay between the subjective worlds of patient and
analyst, or of child and caregiver, that constitutes the proper domain of psychoanalytic inquiry.”
(p. 181)

Following this, we are, so to speak, better understood as intersubjective beings that mind, rather
than minds that inter-subject - to paraphrase the late, great Alan Watts. We now have an
intersubjective psychoanalysis proper, a mode in which ‘being-with', to use Heideggerian
terminology, is an inherent feature and sine qua non of what it is for a human to be in the first
instance, and which displaces the subject opposed to the other as the basic phenomenon of
 James Barnes, MSc., MA

experience. As a result, Storolow & Atwood reimagined the basic entities of the therapeutic
scene as interpenetrating ‘worlds of experience’, only ever (virtually) separate in the disengaged
mode, which became then of minimal importance for their understanding of the ameliorative
process.

The psychoanalytic encounter, as they envisaged it, encouraged a radical involvement with the
client, or perhaps better put, encouraged the disclosure of the already radically involved worlds
of experience of each. Again, much indebted to the Winnicottian vision, this then asks for the
analyst to be an actual participant in the unfolding of this co-constructed trans-subjective world.
With respect to analytic ‘interventions’ of the process understood in this way, Storolow &
Atwood focused on the vicissitudes of attunement-misattunement, connection-alienation and
affect regulation (as they related to the extent and quality of the commensuration,
interpenetration, or lack thereof of their respective worlds) and the analysts sensitivities to
tracking and recognizing the flow of these within the experience as it unfolded.

Unlike Winnicott who too held fast (in public at least) to the old picture in the broadest sense,
Storolow & Atwood, did not see this mode of psychoanalysis as a means to a psyche-qua-
individual end. On the contrary, from their point of view, the goal was in some crucial sense to
de-Cartesian the person, and create something afresh. Their idea, rather, was more to create a
new intersubjective life disrobed of the ill-fitting garbs of relational discompose and stagnation,
in order to breathe new life into the self as one’s world - a world always already with-others.

Psychoanalysis as áskēsis

To summarize the above, the development from the Freudian picture of psychoanalytic practice
to the modern intersubjective-relational one was a development from disengaged cognitive
analysis of the internal conflicts of the patient over-there as, to one of engaged
phenomenological-perceptual exploration of intersubjective fields and trans-subjective
phenomena.

To come back full circle to the understanding of this modern psychoanalytic mode as a form of
áskēsis, we can say the following. Operating in this mode is exactly not be understood as
undertaking some form of systematic scientific enquiry - as Freud conceived psychoanalysis -
 James Barnes, MSc., MA

but as something much closer to the creative mode of artistic exploration – that is, as an
engagement with poeisis, as opposed to the use of lógos, to use the Greek terms which perhaps
speak better to these respective modes. It is much less about the active search for things and the
use of systematic procedures, and much more about a passive receptivity to the emergent and a
letting-go-of facilitated by embodied sensitivities and peculiar kinds of attention and focus. It, as
such, requires a very different kind of stance, one free from attempts to control, manipulate, or
impose one’s agenda, be it personally or theoretically motivated. In Bion’s (1967) seminal paper
“Notes on Memory and Desire,” he speaks very eloquently to this. He writes:

“Memory and desire exercise and intensify those aspects of the mind that derive from sensuous
experience. They thus promote capacity derived from sense impression and designed to serve
impressions of sense... In any session, evolution takes place. Out of the darkness and
formlessness something evolves, that evolution can bear a superficial resemblance to memory,
but once it has been experienced it can never be confounded with memory. It shares with dreams
the quality of being wholly present or unaccountably and suddenly absent. This evolution is what
the psychoanalyst must be ready to interpret.”

With respect to what has been outlined above, we have given the examples of Winnicott’s mode
of what we might call a passive immersion into the creative, spontaneous potentialities of
'transitional space’ that an authentic interpersonal encounter opens up; we have also described
Ogden’s more withdrawn phenomenological-perceptual exploration of the conjuring's of the
“third” as they spontaneously appear; and finally, we have also described Storolow & Atwood’s
particular embodied focus on the minutia of interpersonal attunements as they appear moment-
to-moment in the analytic filed. The development of these ways of being in the analytic mode, as
such, concern the essential features of what áskēsis describes, namely the training or practice of
the ‘irrational’, which is to say, of embodied and perceptual capacities of the self as they relate to
immediate experience.

Furthermore, as have been describing a practice and process for, and primarily about, an other,
we are also, in virtue of this fact, not only talking about this kind of development as a means to
hone, sharpen and birth different aspects of the analysts being. We are also talking about a
training or development of the analyst's being as a whole, given that this skillful engagement is
in an engagement in an intersubjective space. It is often said that a client will only be able to go
as deep as the therapist themselves is able to, something which names the fact that fates are
intertwined in this mode. To put it another way, the intersubjective experience in question can
only go as far as the subjectivities which comprise it are able to. As such, the client’s
development actually presumes the analysts development too - they are of a piece. Thus, we are
also talking about a form of self-transformation that gets to the very heart of what áskēsis
describes, and indeed, we might understand the relational-intersubjective mode of
psychoanalysis as a an áskēsis of human existence itself.
 James Barnes, MSc., MA

References

Beebe, B. & Lachmann, F. (2003). The relational turn in psychoanalysis: A dyadic systems view
from infant research. Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 39 (3), 379–409.

Bion, W.R. (1967a) Notes on memory and desire. Psychoanalytic Forum, 2: 271–280.

Winnicott, D.W. (1960).The Theory of the Parent-Infant Relationship. International Journal of

Psycho-Analysis, 41:585–595

Ogden, T. H. (1994). The Analytic Third: Working with Intersubjective Clinical Facts.
International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 75:3–19

Storolow, R.D. & Atwood, G.E. (1996). The Intersubjective Perspective. Psychoanalytic Review,
83:181‐194

Stolorow, R.D., Atwood, G.E., & Orange, D.M. (2002). Worlds of Experience: Interweaving
Philosophical and Clinical Dimensions in Psychoanalysis. Journal of Phenomenological
Psychology, 34 (2):289–294 (2003).