own, can result in a reductionism that is ill suited to psychoanalytic pur- suits. Taken together, however, the tenets of existentialism and postmod- ernism enable the psychoanalyst to account for human agency and avoid relativistic pitfalls. (2001, p. 164) Frie adds that if everything exists only in relation to something else, if everything is merely socially constructed or linguistically determined, then there would presum- ably be no ground on which autonomous thinking and speaking could take place. Contemporary psychoanalytic theory needs to recognize and acknowl- edge the way in which the individual is able to make choices and facilitate change despite the larger forces at work in determining life experience. Clearly there is much that can be learned from such a combined approach. (2001, p. 165) Frie also reminds us that “the individual self is at once grounded in a sense of separateness and togetherness, which is both subjective and intersubjective. When the mind is seen as existing only in relational and cultural bridges, the importance of individual and intrapsychic experience is diminished” (1999, p. 531). Similar critiques are cogently framed by Mills (1999) and Frederickson (in press). I recommend a reading of this perspective. A good place to start is Frie’s (2003) dis- cussion of the problem of agency and freedom in contemporary psychoanalysis. 2. For Sullivan perhaps more so than for any other major psychoanalytic the- orist, this psychic dimension was absolutely crucial to any understanding of his entire theoretical effort. His concept of the self was intimately related to his theo- ries of motivation, pathology, therapeutic growth and resistance, and, most important, his theory of anxiety and consciousness. 3. The various selves that I outline here are not, in reified fashion, to be con- sidered entities. Rather they each symbolize a set of processes, functions, dynamisms, or psychic operations with a common purpose. In essence, they rep- resent clusters of experience and behavior with a common function or character. 4. Although Sullivan and later interpersonalists clearly recognized the devel- opmental and psychopathological implications of unfortunate interpersonal expe- riences with early sexuality or sensuality, they did not articulate a detailed theory of the ontogenesis of a general sexual drive. Sullivan’s concept of zonal needs, however, provides the theoretical means for a detailed interpersonal study of early, “pregenital” sexual or sensual needs and experiences. Thus, although the inter- personalists have not detailed a theory of infantile or childhood sexuality, inter- personal theory allows room for an expanded developmental theory of sensuality or sexuality from this psychoanalytic perspective. This project, however, goes beyond the purpose of this study of the coparticipatory self, which is focused on the analytic dialectics of the personal and the interpersonal selves and their sig- nificance for coparticipant inquiry. 5. Sullivan came closest to postulating a striving for self-actualization or self- fulfillment in his concept of the “power motive,” a forerunner of Robert White’s 222 Notes