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(1999). Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 35:342-347

Unconscious Subjectivity

A Review of Subjectivity and Intersubjectivity in Modern Philosophy and Psychoanalysis: A Study of Sartre, Binswanger, Lacan, and Habermas: Roger Frie. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1997. 227 pp.

Jon Mills, Psy.D., Ph.D.

WHAT CONSTITUTES HUMAN SUBJECTIVITY? This is a current philosophical as well as psychoanalytic preoccupation. Modern philosophy has largely sought to account for subjectivity by positing an a priori ground that makes consciousness possible, whereas the post-modern position goes so far as to displace subjectivity altogether: The self is a social construction determined by language. In contrast, analytic philosophy is largely a materialistic enterprise that makes human consciousness and the intricacies of intersubjectivity mere brain states. Both of these philosophical perspectives hold dogmatic ontological assertions that lend themselves to highly reductive accounts of subjectivity. Contemporary psychoanalytic theory seems perilously close to adopting the postmodern position. The peril in opting for nominalism over essentialism, and in attributing human change and growth solely to the power of the narrative, is that the notion of the self can be eclipsed by a sociallinguistic determin

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