ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the mutuality of the therapist–patient encounter and the inevitably of ruptures through enactment in that relationship arising from dissociated and therefore unformulated parts of the self of patient or therapist or both, leading to 'doer and done-to' dynamics. It shows how theoretical ideas – especially Heimann's redefinition of countertransference – have endorsed the one-way flow of information from patient to therapist. The chapter suggests that a tension between the very separate ideas about the 'third' of Lacan and Britton and the 'third' of Benjamin: that psychotherapists need theory but they also need to know when and how to let go. To allow themselves to change both in surrendering to authentic recognition of the unique subjectivity of the other and in responding to the call of the other that they too should allow themselves to be authentically recognised in what Daniel Stern and colleagues call 'moments of meeting'.
