Key words: subjectivity, trauma, subjectuality, Self, authenticity
This paper focuses on the relationship between subjectivity, authenticity and the building of what I call our “subjectuality”, meant as the perception of one’s own subjectivity. I will use as starting point some philosophical premises (Husserl and Heidegger) and some psychoanalytical theories on subjectivity (and its processes and organizations) and on authenticity, as the quality of self-perception of one’s self in internal and external intersubjective contexts (Mitchell 1993, Stolorow 2007, Bromberg 1998). After a brief introduction of Sofia, a patient I have been following for several years, I will try to understand what kind of relationship exists between the processes underlying and preceding conscious and unconscious experiences and creating what Mitchell (1993) calls “personal meaning” (or the structure of my subjectivity) and its perception: the perception of myself while I experience my subjectivity and the epistemological, (and indirectly) ontological value of the constructions of meaning organized around me, both as object and subject. The aim is to explore how the experience of being ourselves, of being the person we are, of being and feeling our own “subjectuality” can be represented.