Philosophy Compass 6/7 (2011): 448–458, 10.1111/j.1747-9991.2011.00407.

Hegel, Psychoanalysis and Intersubjectivity

Molly Macdonald*
Queen Mary, University of London

Abstract
This article aims to locate the connections between Hegel’s philosophy and psychoanalytic theory,
with a particular focus on the model of intersubjectivity, as drawn from his Phenomenology of Spirit.
The roots of the encounter between the philosophy of Hegel and psychoanalytic theory can be
traced back to Jacques Lacan and the less well-considered figure of Jean Hyppolite. Lacan, as a
psychoanalyst, used Hegel’s thought in his own theory, as is well known, while Hyppolite was
arguably one of the first to write from a philosophical angle about the links between the two
seemingly opposed systems of thinking. I will give a broad overview of the use of Hegelian phi-
losophy in psychoanalytic theory from the Hyppolite–Lacan relationship through to contemporary
thinkers in the fields of philosophy and psychoanalysis. Although recently the figure of Slavoj
Žižek has popularised the Hegel-psychoanalysis connection, there remains much more to be
explored in this branch of Hegel studies that widens the scope beyond the Lacanian-Marxist ver-
sion he employs. This article will survey existing literature (in the English language) and thus illu-
minate the key texts in the history of Hegel’s impact on psychoanalytic theory and the concept of
intersubjectivity and gesture towards the future potential of this line of inquiry.

1. Origins and Introductions: Jean Hyppolite and Jacques Lacan

This article has two major lines of inquiry running through it. The first is to locate the
points at which Hegel’s philosophy, particularly his work in the Phenomenology of Spirit
and Philosophy of Mind, has been taken up alongside certain strains of psychoanalytic the-
ory. The second, and certainly interconnected, line we trace concerns the concept of
intersubjectivity. Although the scope of this article does not allow for a full and compre-
hensive history of the use of the term, its aim is to situate Hegel as the precursor for
many 20th-century formulations, and sketch the manner in which his version has been
taken up in psychoanalytic theory. This is not to say that there has been one uniform
way in which the concept of intersubjectivity has been reworked or to claim that Hegel
himself used the term. It is, however, to point to select acknowledgements that Hegel’s
theory of recognition, most famously articulated in the dialectic of master and slave and
the struggle for recognition found there in the Phenomenology, is the springboard if not
the direct model for theories of intersubjectivity that have been played out in various
contexts. The overall purpose is to shine light on a fruitful and somewhat neglected area
of Hegel studies, anchored at the point at which a theory of intersubjectivity and an
explicit connection to psychoanalysis converge. We will be leaving to one side the well-
trodden path of Alexandre Kojève’s (1980) Marx-inspired reading of Hegel and the line
of intellectual work his interpretations inspired. A bit more on this will be discussed
below.
A history of the engagement between the philosophy of Hegel and psychoanalytic the-
ory can be traced back to the first part of the 20th century and its roots can be found in
the figures of Jean Hyppolite and Jacques Lacan. Lacan, as a psychoanalyst, used Hegel’s

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 Hegel, Psychoanalysis and Intersubjectivity 449

thought in his own theory, as is well known, while Hyppolite was arguably one of the
first to write from a philosophical angle about the links between the two seemingly
opposed systems of thinking.1 Let us begin with Hyppolite, although it is almost difficult
to sketch his contribution to the story without running Lacan alongside him.
Aside from his role as translator of the Phenomenology of Spirit into French (1939–1941)
and his highly influential Genesis and Structure of Hegel’s Phenomenology (1946, 1979), and
Logic and Existence (1952, 1997) Hyppolite wrote what can be considered groundbreaking
pieces on the subject of Hegel, psychoanalysis and the concept of intersubjectivity. Here
we can first turn to Hyppolite’s treatment of Hegel’s theory of recognition and his expli-
cit use of the term ‘intersubjectivity’ as a potential point of origin. In an essay titled ‘The
Human Situation in the Hegelian Phenomenology’ (1955), translated in his work Studies
in Marx and Hegel (1969) he writes:
All conditions of human existence, or, as Hegel puts it, of self-consciousness of life, are con-
tained in the need of desire for recognition in another desire, or in intersubjectivity [l’inter-subjecti-
vité] which is the sole means by which consciousness of life may become something other than
a reflection of this life. It is through this necessary intersubjectivity and the relation with nature
or universal life that Humanity and History, or, in Hegel’s terminology, Spirit, are founded.
(Hyppolite, Critical Assessments 408)2
The equation of the process of recognition as the basis of the intersubjective relationship
is clearly set out by Hyppolite here, and it is this formulation that will be worked
through by thinkers to come. However, very few seem to acknowledge Hyppolite as the
source and earliest champion of Hegel as the inaugural theorist of ‘intersubjectivity’.
The second piece of importance came in 1955 when Hyppolite delivered a lecture to
the French Society for Psychoanalysis titled ‘Hegel’s Phenomenology and Psychoanalysis’,
which was transcribed by Jean Laplanche and first published in French as ‘Phenomenolo-
gie de Hegel et la Psychanalyse’ in La Psychanalyse, Vol III (1957). English language read-
ers were given access to it in a collection on Hegel titled New Studies in Hegel’s
Philosophy, edited by Warren E. Steinkraus (1971). The version of the paper included in
the Steinkraus volume was given reconsideration by Hyppolite himself, including the
addition of illuminating footnotes as to his discussions with Lacan following the delivery
of the original lecture on the relationship between Freud and Hegel, and the implications
for the crossover of the disciplines of psychoanalysis and philosophy. In the paper, Hyp-
polite justifies his comparison of Hegel and Freud through the idea of knowledge via
‘retrospection’ and through the myth of Oedipus and focuses in particular on the notion
of the ‘We’. Hyppolite’s suggestion is that the Phenomenology can be read in an interpreta-
tion that is ‘not really that different from that of Freudian psychoanalysis’ (58). He seems
to be saying two things: the first is that we should read the text as a psychoanalysis (that
as part of Hegel’s ‘we’, we are undergoing) and simultaneously that we interpret the text
via the methodology of psychoanalysis. Of paramount importance is that Hyppolite’s
interpretation of the Phenomenology hinges on this idea of intersubjectivity, that ‘truth as
revelation is established by the intercommunication of human self-consciousness, by
mutual recognition, and by language which replaces the problem of God’ (58). The con-
nections between intersubjectivity and language as the medium through which these rela-
tions play out, is precisely where Lacan will proceed with his most Hegelian
formulations.
Beyond Hyppolite’s own writing, the interactions between Lacan and Hyppolite, in
Lacan’s seminars and elsewhere, are key points of departure for any discussion regarding
Hegel and psychoanalysis, as they were, in French psychoanalyst André Green’s words,

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‘taking place at the highest point of Hegel-Freud relations’ (1). An exemplary moment
here can be found in Hyppolite’s remarks in Lacan’s seminar on Freud’s paper Verneinung
(‘Negation’), which were added as an appendix to Lacan’s 1966 (French) edition of Écrits
where Lacan’s response was also found (along with Freud’s original paper). Both (but not
Freud’s paper) are reprinted in Seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book I, Freud’s Papers on Technique
1953–1954 (1988). In his introduction to Hyppolite’s presentation, Lacan acknowledges
that a (Hegelian) philosopher, especially one ‘practised in the analysis of language’ (55) is
most suited to take on the task of unpacking Freud’s text and expresses an esteem for
Hyppolite that he rarely seems to offer to the rest of his seminar attendees.
To trace all of the ways in which Lacan is in debt to Hegel would be the subject of
another article than this one, and is in many ways part of Žižek’s project. However, for
our purposes here it is enough to note that the Lacanian model of intersubjectivity is
taken as essential background for the study of the concept of intersubjectivity in Hegel’s
relationship with psychoanalytic theory. We can locate the concept in Lacan and his
indebtedness to Hegel again in his first Seminar. Lacan argues that, ‘Speech is the found-
ing medium of the intersubjective relation’, and locates hate as one pole (as the opposite
of love) of the ‘very structure of the intersubjective relation’. He remarks that this is
‘what Hegel recognises as the impasse for the coexistence of two consciousnesses, from
whence he deduces his myth of the struggle for pure prestige’ (274–7). The majority of
his commentary on Hegel can be found in Seminar I, particularly Chapter XVII ‘The
object relation and the intersubjective relation’. Of additional interest is Seminar of Jacques
Lacan: Book II, The Ego in Freud’s Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis 1954–1955,
Chapter XV, ‘Odd or even? Beyond intersubjectivity’.
Lacan’s most fruitful engagement with Hegel’s theory occurred in the 1950s and it has
been well acknowledged that once he turned to a more structuralist linguistic framework
he effectively renounced his earlier ties to Hegelian philosophy. Indeed, the exchange
with Hyppolite on Freud’s Verneinung marks a crucial moment in the history of the rela-
tionship between Hegel’s philosophy and psychoanalysis. Elisabeth Roudinesco notes the
significance of this moment in her biography of Lacan. It was, she remarks, a critical
turning point in Lacan’s intellectual development that saw him begin to ‘liquidate’ the
discourse of philosophy as a ‘direct result of the advent of structuralism’ (Jacques Lacan:
An Outline of a Life 254). The philosophical approach, according to Lacan, could not deal
properly with the Freudian idea of the Unconscious and thus, according to Roudinesco,
it was structuralism that prevailed. Lacan’s enduring legacy for psychoanalysis was to see
the Unconscious as ‘structured like a language’ and to pursue the realm of the Symbolic
in relation to those of the Real and the Imaginary.3

2. Beyond Hyppolite and Lacan: The Key Works

As we move further into the 20th century and past Hyppolite’ and Lacan’s work, there
are a handful of significant stopping points. Paul Ricoeur’s Freud and Philosophy (1970)
examines the potential resonance between the two fields. While it is not devoted entirely
to Hegel’s philosophy, Ricoeur does centrally place Hegel’s philosophy as key to helping
illuminate Freud’s thought and wishes ‘to show in each discipline of thought, considered
in and for itself, the presence of its other’ (468). In Book III: Dialectic he charts the
majority of his formulations on the way in which Hegel and Freud can be read together.
There are two articles of note that were published in roughly the same era as Ricoeur’s
1970 publication in English. The first is Darrell Christensen’s, ‘Hegel’s Phenomenological
Analysis and Freud’s Psychoanalysis’, in the International Philosophical Quarterly (1968) and

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the second is Clark Butler’s ‘Hegel and Freud: A Comparison’ in Philosophy and Phenome-
nological Research (1976). One can see in Butler’s article an indication of just how undev-
eloped the line of inquiry into the Hegel ⁄ psychoanalysis connection is at that point of
the 20th century with a glance at the bibliography. There are six titles, four of which
had yet to be translated into English, including the article by Hyppolite, ‘Phenomenolo-
gie de Hegel et la Psychanalyse’, discussed above. When Butler writes in the first line of
his article that, ‘Exploration has recently begun into the relation between Freud and
Hegel’ he is sitting at a particular juncture of history where this kind of thinking would
have started to be acceptable outside of Lacanian circles. Although an important contribu-
tion to the discussion of the convergence of Hegel’s philosophy and psychoanalytic the-
ory, Butler’s attempt to read stages of infantile development side by side with the
development of consciousness in the Phenomenology feels forced at times. For example, he
equates the concept of desire in Hegel with the ‘Freudian oral stage in psychosexual
development’ (511). I’m not entirely sure if it is helpful to the project at hand to be so
specific, because this means that the complexities of both categories are flattened out for
the sake of a provocative and original comparison. However, he does strikingly set out
the need for Hegel to be considered alongside psychoanalytic theory in order that history
and the events of the time be understood in more nuanced ways.
A reason for the considerable paucity of the field is, perhaps aside from the idea that
psychoanalytic theory has consistently had a difficult road to travel in philosophical
circles, that the version of Hegel embraced by the 20th century, predominately French
intellegentsia had shades of Hyppolite’s reading, but was far more Kojève’s spin on the
Phenomenology. The more nuanced Hegel of complex intersubjectivity, the Hegel that
went beyond the master and slave dialectic, with resonances in psychoanalytic theory,
was not as easily co-opted to a political model that was being sought in a post-World
War Two era. It was a particular flavour of Hegel that was accepted, the Hegel of desire
and domination. Judith Butler’s exceptional work Subjects of Desire (1987) is especially
illuminating on the subject and charts the French reception of Hegel and its impact on
thinkers like Lacan and Sartre.4 In another work, The Psychic Life of Power (1997), Butler
writes about the overemphasis on a reading of the ‘Lordship and Bondage’ episode that
still cannot escape the impact that first Marx’s reading and then the reading and interpre-
tation of this episode by Kojève has had on the wider understanding of this particular sec-
tion of Hegel’s work. Robert Williams argues in Hegel’s Ethics of Recognition (1997) that
Kojève’s narrow focus, which equates recognition with the struggle between master and
slave, ‘distorted’ Hegel’s original concept of intersubjectivity. Williams’s work here is an
elaboration upon his earlier, pioneering book Recognition: Fichte, Hegel and the Other
(1992), about which more below. Williams claims that the scope of the concept of inter-
subjectivity in the Phenomenology is ‘wider than master and slave’, and while the categories
of master and slave are an important ‘first phase of unequal recognition’, they ‘must and
can be transcended’ (Williams, Ethics 10). To widen the scope allows the concept of inter-
subjetivity to move beyond a static position, into one that can be used in developmental
and more progressive, process-based models. We highlight Judith Butler and Williams as
two examples of thinkers who wish to resituate Hegel beyond a strictly Kojèvian reading,
thus opening up potential avenues of further study.
There are those, and André Green is a prime example, who found their roots in Laca-
nian psychoanalysis but found his approach too limiting. While recognising that he was
amongst the very first to bring Hegel and psychoanalysis together, Green believes that
Lacan tied his subject too ‘narrowly to language’ and that there is something more elusive
and powerful in the psychic life of the subject that exists outside of its relationship to

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linguistic structures. Green’s work on the concept of the negative in The Work of the Neg-
ative (1999) and elsewhere marks him as a practising psychoanalyst who incorporates
Hegelian philosophy into his own theory and writing. The nature of his psychoanalytic
theory aligns it more solidly with a philosophical tradition than many practicing clini-
cians.
On one level, Green states that any comparative study of Hegel and Freud would have
to make the distinction between direct and indirect connections in their thought. Lacan’s
use and interpretation of Hegel in his own writing, to which Green is, in part, indebted,
is based more on what is implicit in the connections than what is explicit, ‘i.e. on the
intuition that the psychoanalytic process might be resonant with Hegel’s thought’ (3).
That is to say, Freud famously did not read Hegel and thus we are not misguidedly to go
looking in the reading of Freud for direct reference to Hegel as his predecessor. On
another level, Green wishes to read both Hegel and Freud in this comparison within the
‘context of a history of ideas which itself owes something to the Hegelian concept of the
development and creation of theoretical systems’ (4). He acknowledges that psychoana-
lytic thinking has since put distance between itself and the Hegelian ideas that influenced
Lacan. In many ways one of his main theoretical moves, which is his return to the root
of the negative as it is found in Hegel, serves to enforce Green’s claim that ‘something is
continuing which started with Hegel: the idea of consciousness as a process which is
self-revelatory through its discourse, the path from latency to actuality’ (41). This basic
positioning of Hegel as a thinker of ‘process’ is, of course, not unique to Green, but his
connection between the idea of process in philosophy and process in psychoanalysis is
one that allows for a more nuanced view of how Hegel has provided fertile ground for
psychoanalytic theory and can continue to do so.
The work of Slavoj Žižek has brought to wide attention his particular version of Laca-
nian–Hegelian theory. Indeed, Žižek’s name might be the first to spring to mind these
days when the words Hegel and psychoanalysis are uttered in the same sentence. His
works, Tarrying With The Negative: Kant, Hegel And The Critique Of Ideology (1993); The
Indivisible Remainder: An Essay on Schelling and Related Matters (1996); a collection of his
essays, Interrogating the Real (2005) (where he posits the ‘negation of negation’, as the
‘Hegelian version’ of ‘death drive’ (34)) have offered, in no systematic fashion, a set of
readings that mobilises Hegel in order to understand Lacan and vice versa. He consistently
argues that Lacan himself was thoroughly Hegelian, even after he renounced his philoso-
phy, and even, as Žižek argues, if he didn’t know it himself. At the heart of his project,
if there is such a place, he advocates:
reading Hegel with Lacan, that is to say, by reading Hegel in terms of the Lacanian problematic
of the lack in the Other, the traumatic void against which the process of signification articulates
itself. (Interrogating the Real 27)
Given the prodigious nature of Žižek’s publications and the slight cult of personality that
he engenders, it would be easy to overlook other, in comparison quieter, work that has
furthered the field of Hegel studies from the angles we are exploring here.
There are a handful of other books that re-centre discussions of Hegel
alongside psychoanalytic theory. Jon Mills’ lucid and original work The Unconscious Abyss:
Hegel’s Anticipation of Psychoanalysis (2002) represents one of the only full-length studies
devoted entirely to the connections between Hegel and psychoanalysis. Mills traces the
concept of the unconscious in Hegel’s thinking, locating its presence predominantly in
the Philosophy of Mind as well as the Phenomenology of Spirit.5 As both a philosopher and
practicing psychoanalyst, Mills’ treatment of Hegel’s thought as having anticipated many

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elements of psychoanalysis is key. His work finds its place amongst the few contemporary
psychoanalysts and theorists who aim to effect a change in the field of psychoanalytic
practice by translating aspects of Hegelian philosophy into psychoanalytic theory. Mills
stands apart, however, with his emphasis on psychoanalysis as ‘process’ and his compre-
hensive and detailed analysis of Hegel’s philosophy from this angle. While a different pro-
ject from Mills’, in that he is interested less in an anticipation of Freud and more in
situating the concept of madness (albeit a reading informed by psychoanalytic theory)
amongst Hegel’s wider philosophical concerns, Daniel Berthold-Bond’s work Hegel’s The-
ory of Madness (1995) also serves to create a rich and nuanced dialogue between Hegel
and psychoanalytic theory. Berthold-Bond illuminates Hegel’s writings on psychology,
medicine and the ontology of sanity and insanity. He argues that for Hegel, the line
between a healthy mind and a ‘diseased’ mind is actually quite thin and that both share
the same basic structures.
In addition, Wilfried Ver Eecke’s work Denial, Negation, and the Forces of the Negative:
Freud, Hegel, Lacan, Spitz, and Sophocles (2006) uses Hegel’s philosophy as a way of inter-
rogating the Freudian concepts of denial and negation, and he argues for the usefulness of
Hegel’s philosophy for helping to ‘clarify the logical structure of Freudian insights’ (137,
n2).6 Along these lines, Julia Kristeva’s Revolution in Poetic Language (1984) also has an
essential discussion of the concept of negation and how it relates to ‘negativity’ in Hegel
and psychoanalysis. Richard D. Chessick’s work The Future of Psychoanalysis (2007)
includes a chapter devoted not only to what Hegel can offer to psychoanalytic theory,
but also to what in Hegelian philosophy is important to the ‘phenomenology of the his-
tory and development of psychoanalysis’ (198). While the list of works just cited is not
exhaustive, and is only dealing with the English language, we can remain certain that the
area of scholarship that combines a theoretical, as opposed to a clinical, approach regard-
ing the use of Hegel’s philosophy for psychoanalysis remains underdeveloped.

3. Recognition and Intersubjectivity – On the Way to the Analytic Setting

As previously mentioned, the scope of this article does not allow for a full treatment of
the concept of recognition as it is drawn out of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. This is
because there are many works in the field of philosophy on the Phenomenology itself that
discuss the concept and secondarily, because it is used as a model across various disciplines
such as law, history, sociology I would not have space to do justice to its nuances in each
field. We can address only a couple of the most pertinent studies here. Taking Hyppo-
lite’s line of thinking as our foundation, it is odd to find that although nearly all of the
scholarly texts on the Phenomenology discuss the concept of recognition, few translate it
into terms of intersubjectivity. This is due, in part, to the idea that Hegel himself did not
use the term and so clearly any reading of intersubjectivity into his philosophy is able to
do so only given the benefit of 20th-century theoretical and philosophical formulations.
Strangely, not having noted Hyppolite’s acknowledgement of intersubjectivity in
Hegel, Robert Williams’s aforementioned, highly original Recognition: Fichte, Hegel and the
Other also claims that recognition (Annerkennung) is the ground of intersubjectivity, but
that the concept of intersubjectivity ‘in German idealism is all but unnoticed’ (1).
Williams credits Fichte and Hegel with having brought the concept to philosophy and
spends his work detailing the inception and progression of the concept of intersubjectiv-
ity. His aim is to recover this original ground for what he locates as a burgeoning interest
in the philosophy of intersubjectivity and the ‘problem of the Other’ taking place in
20th-century intellectual thought. It is striking on many levels, and as noted, particularly

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for his treatment of the impact that Kojève’s ‘misleading’ and ‘distorting’ interpretation
has had on 20th-century philosophy and theory and the manner in which Kojève’s Hegel
became the Hegel of ‘closure’ and ‘anti-life’ in a way that was not true to Hegel’s own
thought. A collection of articles that discuss Hegel along similar lines, Hegel’s Dialectic of
Desire and Recognition (1996) is edited by John O’Neill. Edward S. Casey’s and J. Melvin
Wood’s ‘Hegel and Lacan: The Dialectic of Desire’ succinctly moves through the way in
which Lacan drew his own concept of desire and the other out of Hegel.
Roger Frie charts the impact of Hegel on Lacan and follows its trajectory through to
Sartre, Ludwig Binswanger and Jürgen Habermas in his cogently argued study of the
concept, Subjectivity and Intersubjectivity in Modern Philosophy and Psychoanalysis (1997).
This work is of key importance for understanding the evolution of thought regarding
the concept and the ways in which an emphasis on language and communication, espe-
cially in the work of Habermas and Lacan, altered theories of intersubjectivity.7 Frie
helpfully highlights the main tensions that have arisen in relatively recent theories of
intersubjectivity in both philosophy and psychoanalysis between such categories as ‘sub-
jectivity and objectivity, internal and external, private and public, separateness and
togetherness’ (197).
Habermas’s Labour and interaction: Remarks on Hegel’s Jena Philosophy of Mind (1967)
draws a major distinction between Fichte and Hegel regarding the foundation of the ‘I’.
For Fichte, Habermas argues, the foundation of the ‘I’ comes in the idea of the ‘subjec-
tivity of self-knowing’ and that this creates the dialectic between the ‘I’ and the ‘other,
whereas for Hegel, the framework is that of ‘intersubjectivity of spirit, in which the ‘I’
communicates not with itself as its ‘other’ but instead with another ‘‘I’’ as its ‘‘other’’ ’
(Habermas, Theory and Practice 104). This is a key moment in the trajectory of the con-
cept of intersubjectivity, because from this point on Habermas is often credited with
bringing it into 20th-century theory, both via G. H. Mead’s (1962) reading of mutual
recognition and directly from his own interpretation of Hegel, whereas Hyppolite is
somewhat overlooked as a point of origin. Interestingly, however, Habermas does not
simply fix his reading of mutual recognition and thus of intersubjectivity in the mas-
ter ⁄ slave dialectic in the 1807 Phenomenology as most versions of the theory do, but
instead finds the roots in Hegel’s Jena lectures of 1803–1804 and 1805–1806. Habermas
is highlighted in this present article so that there is a point of reference for the way in
which particular lines of psychoanalytic theory follow his reading of intersubjectivity,
which finds its basis in Hegel’s philosophy.

4. Hegel and Intersubjectivity in the Analytic Realm

In the last decades of the 20th-century there was a movement towards intersubjective
theory on the side of psychoanalytic theory written from a more clinical perspective.
Arnold H. Modell (1993) doubts ‘whether our present psychology of intersubjectivity
could have developed without Hegel. For Hegel appeared to have intuitively grasped the
fundamental aspects of the psychology of self and other’. Indeed, Modell continues,
‘Hegel can justifiably be termed the first intersubjective or relational psychologist’ (98–9).
Let us briefly touch on these traditions.
The predominately American ‘intersubjective’ and ‘relational’ schools of analysis had
their origins in 1970s American psychoanalytic movements. The relational school is
mainly associated with the work of Stephen Mitchell and Jay Greenberg and of the two
schools is of less interest to our survey. The best-known representatives of the intersub-
jective school for one line of theory are Robert Stolorow, James Atwood and Donna

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Orange. Atwood and Stolorow claim their first use of the term ‘intersubjectivity’ was
used in an article in 1978, but develop theories of intersubjectivity throughout their
works such as Atwood and Stolorow’s Structures of Subjectivity: Explorations in Psychoanalytic
Phenomenology (1984), Working Intersubjectively: Contextualism in Psychoanalytic Practice
(1997), written with Orange, The Intersubjective Perspective (1994), and Worlds of Experience:
Interweaving Philosophical and Clinical Dimensions in Psychoanalysis (2002).
They define intersubjectivity as a ‘sensibility that continually takes into account the
inescapable interplay of the two subjects in any psychoanalysis. It radically rejects the
notion that psychoanalysis is something one isolated mind does to another, or that devel-
opment is something one person does or does not do’. (Orange, Atwood, Stolorow,
Working Intersubjectively 18). Although they take Hegel’s master ⁄ slave model as the starting
point for any kind of thinking about ‘dominance relations’ and for any thinking about
the relation of self and wider historical and intellectual contexts, they do not use the
master ⁄ slave paradigm to represent a developmental stage of subjectivity, as does Jessica
Benjamin, a psychoanalyst who explicitly pays her debt to Hegel’s model, but claims to
draw her use of the term ‘intersubjectivity’ out of Habermas’s work, rather than, as we
have, Hyppolite’s.
Benjamin’s work marks a second important strain of theoretical and clinical work that
uses Hegel and the master ⁄ slave paradigm as a model for recognition and intersubjective
relations and for what is seen as grounding an understanding of the dialectical nature of
the theory and practice of psychoanalysis. Three of her works are key here: The Bonds of
Love: Psychoanalysis, Feminism and the Problem of Domination (1990), Shadow of the Other:
Intersubjectivity and Gender in Psychoanalysis (1998) and, ‘Beyond Doer and Done To: An
Intersubjective View of Thirdness’ (2004). Benjamin shows a consistent allegiance to He-
gel, but seems to confine herself to his most famous chapter of the Phenomenology.
Thomas Ogden’s work is similarly representative of this line. Ogden’s The Subjects of
Analysis (1994), owes, and acknowledges, a great debt both to Hegel’s Phenomenology and
to André Green’s work mentioned above. The majority of the theory found in Ogden’s
Subjects of Analysis is shot through with the model of dialectical tension (subject and
object, analyst and analysand) that he sees as inherent in subjectivity. Ogden also often
uses (a version of) the activity of Hegel’s Aufhebung for his discussion of the analytic set-
ting. He states, for instance: ‘The intersubjective and the individually subjective each cre-
ate, negate, and preserve the other’ (Ogden, 64). He also utilises a concept of creative or
generative negation in his work to emphasise his belief that there is not static state of
being but only a flux of conscious and unconscious thought assisting in the creation of a
subject.
Relational and Intersubjective Perspectives in Psychoanalysis: A Critique, edited by Jon Mills
(2005) is comprised of discussions and or critiques of the crossover between phenome-
nology and intersubjectivity. It highlights the contemporary nature of the topic of
intersubjectivity amongst psychoanalysts and psychologists. Of particular interest, Roger
Frie’s and Bruce Reis’, ‘Intersubjectivity: From Theory through Practice’ gives a solid
grounding in the trajectory of the term. They attempt to link thought about intersub-
jectivity as found in continental philosophy to its consideration in psychoanalytic
literature and place Hegel as the precursor to intersubjective theory in psychoanalysis.
Tracing the philosophical history of the concept in his article, ‘Phenomenology of Inter-
subjectivity: A Historical Overview and Its Clinical Implications’, M. Guy Thompson
includes Hegel as a source of intersubjectivity theory. These latter texts are evidence of
the rise of interest in theories of intersubjectivity in both the clinical and philosophical
realms.

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5. Conclusion
There is arguably a certain limitation to the readings of intersubjectivity that stay within
the Hegelian confines of the ‘struggle for recognition’ as based in the master ⁄ slave dialec-
tic. To return to the way in which Hyppolite was reading Hegel alongside psychoanalytic
theory and to explore the various avenues opened up by his work and those that
followed, is to find a Hegel of a more complex intersubjectivity, of process, of Life, of
generative negation. There is still much work to be done with his Philosophy of Mind
(1971) and with other key movements of self-consciousness in the Phenomenology, such as
the unhappy consciousness. All of this would help to explode notions of Hegel as simply
a thinker of the ‘end of history’, of totality and ‘system’, and of a fixed Absolute. A good
example of this kind of project is found in Catharine Malabou’s work around the concept
of plasticity in The Future of Hegel: Plasticity, Temporality, and Dialectic (2004). Malabou
breaks Hegel out of these binds and offers a way of seeing the openness and possibilities
for change and transformation the Phenomenology can suggest. In What Should We Do
With Our Brain? (2009), Malabou again takes on the concept of plasticity and reads it
with psychoanalytic and neurobiological theory, providing us with a provocative model
for the potentials of this kind of interdisciplinary work.
Continuing to resituate Hegel as I’ve suggested above would also open the door even
wider for discussions of the ethics of reconciliation and morality in terms of intersubjec-
tivity, and furthermore for ways of formulating theories of freedom. Versions of this path
have been taken in the work of Derrida (see Glas (1986) for a striking and complex
example) and in much of the work of Judith Butler (see for instance Antigone’s Claim:
Kinship Between Life and Death (2000)). There is exciting work being done by scholars
such as David Ciavatta, whose book Spirit, the Family, and the Unconscious in Hegel’s Philos-
ophy (2009) approaches the ‘phenomenology of intersubjectivity’ as a way of working
through theories of ethics and family.
The ground is fertile for philosophy today to continue to formulate theories of inter-
subjectivity and intrasubjectivity through the lens of Hegel and with the aid of psychoan-
alytic theory. The thinkers surveyed in this article and the brief histories traced are key
points of departure and help to illuminate the way for those that will hopefully follow.

Short Biography
Molly Macdonald’s research interests are in Hegel and his French reception, continental
philosophy, psychoanalysis, and most recently neuroscientific theories of plasticity and
intersubjectivity. She has an article forthcoming in the spring edition of Parallax on the
concept-metaphor of ‘suturing’ in the work of Gayatri Spivak and is at work on a mono-
graph on Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit and the psychoanalytic theory of André Green
and Christopher Bollas, with a focus on concepts Force, binding and ‘thirdness’. She is
currently teaching philosophy and literature at Queen Mary, University of London,
where she completed her PhD in Philosophy in December 2008. She holds a BA from
Barnard College, Columbia University and an MA in Modernism from the University of
East Anglia.

Notes
* Correspondence: Queen Mary, University of London, Mile End Road, London E1 4NS, UK. Email:
m.macdonald@qmul.ac.uk.

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1
Although Lacan’s relationship with Hegel’s philosophy is mentioned in many texts, for the most succinct account
from the point of view of an intellectual biography see, Elisabeth Roudinesco Jacques Lacan & Co. A History of Psy-
choanalysis in France 1925–1985, trans. by Jeffrey Melman (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990) and Elisa-
beth Roudinesco, Jacques Lacan: An Outline of a Life and a History of a System of Thought, trans. by Barbara Bray
(Cambridge: Polity Press, 1999), 61–107.
2
Hyppolite, ‘The Human Situation in the Hegelian Phenomenology’, in Hegel: Critical Assessments, II, 408. [Italics
Hyppolite’s. ‘L’inter-subjectivité’ in original.] See Etude Sur Marx et Hegel, Paris: Librairie Marcel Rivière et Cie,
1955, 183.
3
For a lively introduction to Lacanian thinking see Slavoj Žižek’s How to Read Lacan (London: Granta, 2006).
4
The influence Kojève’s lectures on Hegel of 1933–1939 had on thinkers like Lacan and his contemporaries has
been well-documented. See Roudinesco, Lacan & Co. 134–47; Peter Dews, Logics of Disintegration (London: Verso,
2007), 64–6; 304, n.26.
5
Jon Mills, The Unconscious Abyss: Hegel’s Anticipation of Psychoanalysis (Albany: SUNY, 2002). See also his article
‘Hegel on Projective Identification: Implications for Klein, Bion, and Beyond’, The Psychoanalytic Review 87.6
(2000): 841–74; and collections on the confluence of psychoanalysis and philosophy of which he is the editor: Psy-
choanalysis at the Limit: Epistemology, Mind, and the Question of Science (Albany: SUNY Press, 2004); Rereading Freud:
Psychoanalysis through Philosophy (Albany: SUNY Press, 2004).
6
See also Ver Eecke’s article ‘Hegel as Lacan’s Source for Necessity in Psychoanalytic Theory’, in Interpreting Lacan,
ed. by Joseph H. Smith and William J. Kerrigan (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983), 113–8.
7
See Dews, Logics of Disintegration, for a discussion of the rise of intersubjectivity theory in Lacan and Habermas,
55–99 and 287–97.

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