In this study the subjective experience of psycho-analytic essence is approached through an examination of conscious and unconscious representations of self-in-work (Dreyfus, 1991). The study begins with an heuristic identified as the psycho-analytic moment, a transitory self-state arising in the course of conducting a psycho-analysis and felt to correspond to occasions of right, expert, good or exemplary therapeutic practice. The study advances to an examination of the lived experience of clinical psycho-analysis through a set of structured and unstructured interviews with two psycho-analysts. The study’s general approach incorporates a revised version of Goethe’s delicate empiricism as adapted by Hoffman (1989). The methods for interviewing participants and for analyzing transcripts were designed to access unconscious communications regarding subjective experience. Interview procedures combined phenomenological and free-associative narrative techniques: Procedures for transcript analysis were developed from literary studies, psycholinguistics, psycho-analysis and grounded theory. The analysis of participants’ utterance led to the hypothesis that an unconscious configuration of inference and memory gives shape to the subjective experience of composite elements of psycho- analytic practice. This hypothesized coherence of unconscious memory and process structures is identified as a structural metaphor. The structural metaphor is posited to underwrite the verisimilitude of lived experience, personal idiom and aesthetic within the clinical encounter. Thus, the structural metaphor is hypothesized to shape not only the psycho-analyst’s representations of his or her way of being-in-work and linguistic deportment within the interview setting, but to also shape the subjective experience of psycho-analytic practice. Thus reconsidered, the psycho-analytic moment is viewed as an existential moment in the ongoing phenomenology of lived experience, occasioned by a convergence of unconscious identity and experience within the clinical field. This existential moment is taken to be indicative of the presence of something essential about self, work or self-in-work, as a result of a set of psychological, affective and visceral factors that arise in this moment of convergence. However, the psycho-analytic moment is assigned little epistemic value in identifying properties of psycho-analysis as a discipline or a practice, instead reflecting the structural metaphor that underlies the experience of that practice.

In this study the subjective experience of psycho-analytic essence is approached through an examination of conscious and unconscious representations of self-in-work (Dreyfus, 1991). The study begins with an heuristic identified as the psycho-analytic moment, a transitory self-state arising in the course of conducting a psycho-analysis and felt to correspond to occasions of right, expert, good or exemplary therapeutic practice. The study advances to an examination of the lived experience of clinical psycho-analysis through a set of structured and unstructured interviews with two psycho-analysts. The study’s general approach incorporates a revised version of Goethe’s delicate empiricism as adapted by Hoffman (1989). The methods for interviewing participants and for analyzing transcripts were designed to access unconscious communications regarding subjective experience. Interview procedures combined phenomenological and free-associative narrative techniques: Procedures for transcript analysis were developed from literary studies, psycholinguistics, psycho-analysis and grounded theory. The analysis of participants’ utterance led to the hypothesis that an unconscious configuration of inference and memory gives shape to the subjective experience of composite elements of psycho- analytic practice. This hypothesized coherence of unconscious memory and process structures is identified as a structural metaphor. The structural metaphor is posited to underwrite the verisimilitude of lived experience, personal idiom and aesthetic within the clinical encounter. Thus, the structural metaphor is hypothesized to shape not only the psycho-analyst’s representations of his or her way of being-in-work and linguistic deportment within the interview setting, but to also shape the subjective experience of psycho-analytic practice. Thus reconsidered, the psycho-analytic moment is viewed as an existential moment in the ongoing phenomenology of lived experience, occasioned by a convergence of unconscious identity and experience within the clinical field. This existential moment is taken to be indicative of the presence of something essential about self, work or self-in-work, as a result of a set of psychological, affective and visceral factors that arise in this moment of convergence. However, the psycho-analytic moment is assigned little epistemic value in identifying properties of psycho-analysis as a discipline or a practice, instead reflecting the structural metaphor that underlies the experience of that practice.

The following project will examine the scientific, metaphysical, and aesthetic themes connected to Goethe's vision of Natur during and surrounding the years of his famed Italian Journey. Goethe's progressing conceptualization of the Urpflanze during this period, as witnessed in his autobiographical Italienische Reise and the Versuch, die Metamorphose der Pflanzen zu erklaren, will be of special concern because of its pertinence to a number of vital natural scientific themes in Goethe's scientific work. I will also trace the progression of these themes over time as seen in Goethe's related theories of the intermaxillary bone and of the morphology of plant organs so as to maintain that the Italian Journey may be seen as a period not only of literary revitalization as commonly cited, but also of scientific progress in connection with Goethe's deepening understanding of Natur as well as its inherent laws and archetypal nature. The first chapter will introduce the project's problem in detail as well as the textual and critical obstructions associated with the project. I will maintain in Chapter II that Goethe's biography during the 1780s shows a systematic progression in the understanding of Natur in his scientific projects and in the Reise, which also helps to demonstrate that Goethe's Journey was a period during which Goethe was able to develop, in greater detail than heretofore, his metaphysical vision of Natur. In Chapter III, I will investigate the primary textual material on Goethe?s notion of the Urpflanze within the Italienische Reise and its resulting extension in his 1790 study of plant morphology, the Metamorphose der Pflanzen. Chapter IV will discuss the topic of the Eins in Nature and anschauende Urteilskraft as detected in Goethe's scientific writings. Chapter V will continue and conclude this argument by linking Richards' argument regarding "Romantic biologists" to Goethe?s natural science during the time of the Italian Journey, thus making a connection between Kunst and Natur in the Italienische Reise and in Goethe's scientific projects during and surrounding the Journey.