ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the vast literature bearing on the concept of the psychoanalytic subject which includes much of the analytic discourse addressing the concepts of the ego, the self, identity, and narcissism and so on. It discusses aspects of the concept of the dialectically constituted and decentred subject of psychoanalysis that have their origins in the work of S. Freud and which were developed by M. Klein and D. W. Winnicott. The chapter considers being some of the central dialectics bearing on the constitution of the subject introduced by Freud, Klein and Winnicott. It focuses on the development of a conception of an intersubjective context for the creation of individual subjectivity. A new type of intersubjective experience is generated through the I-Thou dialectic, dialectic of subjects creating one another through their recognition of one another as subjects. Emanating from a continuous process of dialectical negation, the subject is forever decentred from static self-equivalence.
