“The Strangest Remembrance”: The Analyst's Intersubjective Negotiation of Desire: Commentary on Holly Levenkron, L.C.S.W.

Abstract

In this commentary we emphasize that what Levenkron calls “the process wherein negotiating enactments becomes intersubjective relating” requires negotiation that is intrapsychic as well as relational and that it entails the analyst's internal negotiation between her transferences and her recognitions. We argue that the loss of paradoxical tension between transference and recognition is the breakdown of intersubjectivity. The analyst marooned in her own transference position will persist in negation of the other. We examine the sessions between Levenkron and Ali, noting the complementarity of their transferences, and trace the clinical process whereby analyst and patient recreate intersubjectivity in their relationship.