On the intersubjective in psychoanalysis: Theory as pretense

Psychoanalysis depends on the capacity of one person to understand another. A contemporary solution that psychoanalysis has offered to the epistemological problem of other minds is found in the theory of intersubjectivity. This dissertation explicates psychoanalytic epistemology through a careful examination of its philosophical antecedents, the scholarship of Sigmund Freud and those who immediately followed him in England and the United States, and through a review of contemporary psychoanalysis. Next, three examples of intersubjectivity in psychoanalysis are described, contextualized, and critiqued. It is finally argued that the intersubjective represents an inadequate solution to the epistemological problem. The dissertation closes with recommendations for advancing psychoanalytic theory.