ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the sensibility to reading as a form of relating that resists a premature wish for sameness, that understanding the other involves an openness to intercourse as well as a capacity for identification. It proposes the reader to reflect on the difference, in the encounter with the other, between a state of mind related to unconscious identification and one related to unconscious intercourse. The chapter also explores in reference to some questions that arise for many when reading Donald Meltzer. It utilizes the analytic experience of what authors might describe as the "reading" of the other—whether analyst reading the analysand or the analysand's reading of the analyst—to shed light on the developmental experience in reading a text. The chapter considers rather than develop the critique of the dilemma of the modern era with its psychopathology which in psychoanalytic language authors might describe as narcissism. Philosophers discuss this dilemma under the heading of "scepticism".
