This book is a portrait of the subjective self. It's not the author's self-portrait; nor, obviously, is it a portrait of you.  But it is also not merely a picture of what you see someone else to be. It does depict what you can see your own experience of self to be. So, when you look at it now, it is from your viewing point.  Yet, I remain present. I'm still in the loop; since I'm the one presenting some sort of visualization to you. 

Any time you read a book you're engaged in self-portrayal; yet, you too remain in the communication loop with the author. Look at this book, as if it's a series of paintings, which are on the walls of a gallery.  You walk toward each painting, and intuitively, you search for the best position from which to view it.  When you absorb its various presentations, it--along with the other paintings you've viewed--becomes a portrait of your self.  In your viewing of this book's portrait of the self--where, penultimately, you're going to be that self--you simultaneously make a portrait of this author.  It's like a picture-within-a-picture. On my new TV set, it's called PIP.  My remote clicker lets me bring the inner picture out and switch the outer picture; so then, it is the inner.

Before you read my book, I wanted to alert you to this figure-ground switching and to the regresses of pictures within a portrait.  And, I want to tell you that, as the author, I'm somewhere there in the background.  But more than that, I want to reflect that the author's portrait, as background figure, moves inexorably toward a vanishing point.  We should each see that the background figure has a background.  It's not only of the idea depicted in the book; it's the idea, hurtling way back there.  You, as I, can be affected by these scenes behind the collection and construction and presentation of the ideas of the book. Well, I don't want to sound like a Hitchcock figure, who darts into a film presentation, but hides, daring you to find him. Still, I think that you might want to know about some things that personally felt driving my inquiry and effort.

I'll stage an interview with the author; then it should be easier to switch from inner to outer pictures.  Here's a staged interview. Interlocutor and author:

Q. If there's a life-long puzzle you're concerned about that motivates you to write this book, what is it?

A. There is. My father, entranced with law school and the teachings of Benjamin Cardozo, would tell me about the importance of reason and law.  And he'd relate how very important it was to him, that he live his principles in terms of always trying to use reason to find the way to truth.  But I felt something was missing. A gap between reason and truth.  Yet, the puzzle was a profound one for me; since, reason is an awfully beautiful way to find a path to the truth.

Q. Did your mother have anything to say to contribute to your sense of this puzzle?

A. Yes; she celebrated not merely intuition, but feeling. She would make decisions, because she felt that she knew their outcome.  All this presented its own puzzle, because of the close interrelations of her personal wishes and this thing she called "intuition."  It involved a synthesis.  There were facts about the world, and there were her inner desires.  Somehow, she got them together, and her decisions seemed to make things come out right.

Q. What's the contradiction for you?

A. Well, I think that each parent was playing a role that was popularly attributed.  There were the men.  They were "of the world," and there were the women, who nurtured children. It's not my purpose to see how all this found expression in the law and in various versions of what should be the nature of reason.  I suppose some folks involved in the psychology of social construction would have a field day with all this. Well, I should say just a word.  

You know that I'm a psychologist.  From what I've just said, you'd be right to surmise that I was deeply impressed by the unswerving 20th century commitment that psychology  find its way as a science.  Ironically, the separation of psychology from philosophy always bothered me greatly.  It's as if I was not happy that my puzzle was not in the picture.  The puzzle presented by reason and the contradictions presented by intuition were out of sight.  So, what was to worry?  However limited, can't we be secure in a world of objective facts?

One of the powerful forces making for divisions of science from philosophy and of intuition from observation of fact was the idea that both science and law should be devoted to the objectification of facts. Francis Bacon and Jeremy Bentham felt very deeply about this. Observation was the key. Modern science--and this includes psychology--moved forcefully in the direction of observable facts. Well, here comes my worry!  It's always bothered me that psychology was influenced by this very trend. The idea of an observable mind sounds so much like a contradiction-in-terms.  Ditto for an observable self. 

By now, you see, I'm coming back to your original question.  Each of these ideas--the observable mind and self--can dangerously eliminate the subjective feelings, which my mother unabashedly declared, promoted as her right, celebrated as her nature, and effected as her guide to behavior.

Q. Aha.  Are you coming down on her side and saying that it's a shame to be objective?

A. Well, I'm not going to go too much further here; because I want you to just go ahead now and read the book.

Q.  That's not fair.  You opened all these topics.

 A.  I'll give you some clues. My mother loved poetry, and I spent some time exploring that as a form of writing and thinking.  I found expressive powers of form.  These are enchanced, when meanings you intend are conjoined with word sounds and rhyme, and when these are all synthesized with feelings about the self.  All of this was a college undertaking. The old college try! I looked for the logical structures of poetry and art. For a long time before and since then, I've tried to see what the logical structures of thinking would be in cases, where, the thinking would not be considered traditionally logical. Where is there this non-traditional structuring?  Certainly it's included in the way reason is arrayed in pathological thinking and in defensive thinking--wherein facts are less important than motives (and feelings).  This bias keeps these structures at bay.  But they're also included in determining ways of thinking about feelings, in everyday life.  And in art. And in science, too!

I can't go too far here, and I do think it is fair to tell you that my puzzle solutions are in the book.  I will tell you that I see metaphor as a prime example of the kind of structure I've wanted to explore.  Metaphor is a major vehicle for resolution of contradictions and ironies in the book.  But how all this works in to make the portrait of the subjective self will take you through more than one of the book's galleries and chapters.  

For me, what's basic is questioning logical forms that depict subjectivity. The struggle to depict them is an odyssey.  I have to navigate cross-currents of reason, feeling, intuition, and observation of facts. Within these waters are the deep perplexities of mind and self.  When the forms are discovered, I can come ashore.  When you and I can then make a portrait of subjectivity, we can look at the various pictures, spaced at different rungs and depths, within the portrait.  We can make proposals based on our feelings, and we can attempt to construct propositions of fact.  Metaphor, as I depict it, is a form that will support proposals issuing from feelings. Categories will support propositions of fact.

You did ask me about the life-long puzzles. Yes, you'll find them in the portrait's background.  But let me end here by showing you how my questions will appear in the foreground.  

How do I show the nature of the metaphors and the categories, which might reflect the deep division my parents inherited from a variety of intellectual traditions; how do I put what was divided back into a picture of the unity of the subjective and the objective? Can there be a scientific depiction, which does not eschew subjective experience, rights, and identity, which does account for your own access to your individual sources of personal meaning, and which depicts, for you and me, the personal source of originating ideas and forms?