Existential Reckoning in Self Psychology and Stolorow’s Intersubjectivity Theory: A Discussion of John Riker’s Paper and a Consideration of Intersubjectivity in Psychoanalysis

ABSTRACT

In this paper I discuss John Riker’s article, “A Critique of Stolorow’s Erasure of Self Psychology and his Appropriation of Heigegger’s Theory of Authenticity, plus the Possibility of an Intersubjective Self Psychology” a paper in which Riker sets out to evaluate Stolorow’s intersubjectivity theory and its contribution to psychoanalysis. I attempt to add something to Riker’s consideration of intersubjectivity especially as it relates to our shared mortality, a topic addressed by Stolorow in a lifetime of books and papers. I also comment on some of the similarities and differences between the ideas of Kohut and Stolorow, suggesting that to some extent these differences lie more in the distinctive languages coined by the two authors than in the ideas themselves.

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Judy Guss Teicholz

Judy Guss Teicholz, Ed.D, is a psychologist/psychoanalyst who from 1977-2000 taught and supervised in the Psychiatry/Psychology Department at Harvard Medical School/Massachusetts General Hospital. She also taught and supervised at the Massachusetts Institute for Psychoanalysis and for 30 years had a private practice in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She has written dozens of journal articles on diverse aspects of contemporary psychoanalysis with a special interest in narcissism, intersubjectivity, affect and relationality. She also edited a book on affect regulation and is the author of Kohut, Loewald & the Postmoderns: A Comparative Study of Self & Relationship.