Suspicion, Suffering, and the Shaping of Subjectivity: A Reply to Goldstein

ABSTRACT

My discussion of Dr. Goldstein’s paper “Trust and Suspicion or Sameness of Difference? Reframing Hermeneutics with the Invisible Other” centers on a key clinical question: what, if any, are the limits to therapeutic understanding and interpretation? In distinction to Goldstein, and in returning to Ricœur and Freud, I caution against unduly limiting the interpretive range of what can be shared between a patient and their analyst.

KEYWORDS:

• Hermeneutics
• suspicion
• subjectivity
• suffering
• shared

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Notes on contributors

Allison Merrick

Allison Merrick, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Philosophy at California State University, San Marcos and a research psychoanalyst candidate at The Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis, Los Angeles. Her research focuses on ethics and moral psychology, broadly construed, as she aims to better understand how agents come to hold the moral commitments that define, limit, or empower them. In addition to her scholarly work, which has appeared in a number of edited collections and scholarly journals, she has a private practice in San Marcos, California.