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reconstruction of an archeologic find. Today analysts are divided. Some,
particularly child analysts, are concerned with and look to find the historic
truth, while others look to understand and find the person's inner subjec–
tive truth or psychic reality. Psychic reality today no longer refers only to
Freud's unconscious drives, but to each individual's internal
VVeltanschauung
(view of the world), a subjective compromise formation or unconscious
fantasy molded by the impact of both early experience, unconscious wish–
es, needs expectations and fears. His or her psychic reality is the only
meaningful reality by which each person processes all external and inter–
nal events. Some analysts go further, abandoning the idea of the existence
or relevance of historic truth, but speak only of narrative truth-the estab–
lishment of the most coherent and meaningful life story as expostulated by
Roy Schafer and influenced by the concept of dialogue created by Richard
Rorty. Those of us who still use reconstruction in the analytic treatment
process work with the assumption of establishing the subjective psychic
reality of the patient's childhood, not the objective real past of mother and
child interaction or external "facts." Others have abandoned reconstruc–
tion altogether and work only in the here and now of transference-as
expanded by Merton Gill in his emphasis on the here and now-and on
transference interpretation only, and transference interpretation early in
analysis at that. Others, such as current self psychologists in their emphasis
on working from a position within the patient's subjective conscious self–
experience, essentially are working in the here and now as well, although
in their "interpretive-reconstructive" comments they give weight to a
general reconstruction of early maternal empathic failure.
The original early image of the analysts as the objective observer, based
on Freud's description of the analytic attitude as likened to the uninvolved
surgeon or the opaque mirror that only mirrors the patient, also has been
abandoned and replaced to a large extent by the concept of the subjectiv–
ity. Though not new, the concept of intersubjectivity has been the center
of controversy. Intersubjectivity refers to the awareness of the analytic dyad
as a two-person system, two people with their subjective reactions inter–
acting, impacting and being impacted on by each other, even creating a
dialogue and a narrative. This, of course, is relative in degree. Since one
person, the patient, is the subject of concern, concentrated on and pur–
posely explored in depth. The other, the analyst, has a position of relative
distance and relative security, enabling him or her to function in the rela–
tionship in a more self-aware and observant way by the use of what we call
his "second" or "work self," based on training, theoretic knowledge and
personal analysis, as well as presumably less central involvement. In the psy–
choanalytic encounter then, the analyst's countertransference-the total
subjective experience of the analyst, in the larger sense, or, in the narrow
sense, the unconscious influence of the analyst's internal world left over
