This book is about how we can deepen our understanding of subjectivity through the use of the concept of triangulation. Fundamentally, this book seeks to address the question of how we can be objective about subjectivity. If psychology, as a scientific discipline, is concerned with the study of human experience, which is essentially subjective, then we are faced with the problem of how to apply the scientific method as it is commonly understood. If experience is essentially unique to the experiencer, then there seems to be a basic incompatibility with the scientific method. As currently practiced, this method searches for psychic phenomena which can be validly measured. But this does not enable us to examine individual experience. An individual's experience seems to become impenetrable because generalization across different individuals' experience entails the loss of individuality in the generalization. Thus, in using the scientific method as it usually understood, we lose the very matter we are trying to study. This leaves us with the question of how we are going to advance our inquiry? Table of Contents: ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ABOUT THE EDITOR INTRODUCTION PART I: TRIANGULATION, COMMUNICATION, AND INSIGHT Introduction 1) Experimental psychology and psychoanalysis: what we can learn from a century of misunderstanding - Paul Whittle 2)The third: a brief historical analysis of an idea - Charles M. T. Hanly 3)Triangulation, one’s own mind, and objectivity - Marcia Cavell 4) Subjectivity, objectivity, and triangular space - Ronald Britton PART II: TRIANGULATION IN THE TEMPORAL DIMENSION Introduction 5)Consultation or assessment: engagement and treatment decisions in psychotherapy with young people in a community-based setting - James S. Rose 6) Is twice a week enough? Thinking about the number of sessions per week as a determinant of the intensity of psychoanalytic psychotherapy - James S. Rose PART III: TRIANGULATION IN THE PSYCHOANALYTIC SETTING Introduction 7) Distortions of time in the transference: some clinical and theoretical implications - James S. Rose 8) Symbols and their function in managing the anxiety of change: an intersubjective approach - James S. Rose 9) The presence of absence in the transference: some clinical, countertransference, and metapsychological implications - James S. Rose 10) Couples, doubles, and absence: some thoughts on the psychoanalytical process considered as a learning system - James S. Rose PART IV: SOME METAPSYCHOLOGICAL SPECULATIONS AND SOME TECHNICAL CONCLUSIONS Reflections and summary INDEX About the Editor: James Rose PhD is a Fellow of the Institute of Psychoanalysis and a member of the British Psychoanalytic Society. Since 1987, he has worked as a psychoanalytic psychotherapist at the Brandon Centre for Counselling and Psychotherapy for Young People, which is situated in Kentish Town, London. |