The intrapsychic and intersubjective in psychoanalysis

Both the intrapsychic and the intersubjective take part in the analytic process. A pointless struggle for supremacy may await those who support either point of view exclusively. If the "objectal" perspective is well known, the "subjectal" one is less theoretically defined: it includes the series of the ego, the self; the subject, the I, etc. The drive is the matrix of the subject. An examination of the relationships between perception and representation raises the question of the connections between drive and object. The object is the revealer of the drive. A revision of Freud's theory must underline the role of the object, which is unduly neglected. The new paradigm should consider the indissociable couple, drive-object. The construction of the object leads retroactively to the hypothesis of the drive which reciprocally constructs the object. The function of the similar other (autre semblable) is defined as a fundamental link (desire and identification). The intersubjective relationship connects two intra psychic subjects. Force and meaning are intertwined and combine their effects. Psychic causality is at the crossroads of the biological (metabiological) and the cultural. This paper examines the transition from the first topographic model to the second.