ABSTRACT
This paper is an elaboration of an idea I have worked on for many years, the idea of recognition. In the past I explored (Benjamin, 1988, 1995a, b) both the path human beings follow in developing the capacity for mutual exchange of recognition and the effects of that exchange, or lack of it, which we observe in clinical practice. In this paper I present ideas on what I call thirdness, a quality of the inter-subjective exchange that is relevant to the recognition process. What I mean by thirdness is the quality of relatedness that is associated with two partners sharing an orientation to a third principle or perspective that lends the relationship a sense of mental space and mutual accommodation. I show how the quality of thirdness is present in the mother-child relation and why that is so significant for intersubjectivity. I build on a distinction that has informed all my work on recognition (Benjamin, 1988, 1995a, b, 2004): that between mutual recognition and the breakdown into complementary twoness, in which there is a struggle of wills or accommodation that requires submission or compliance. I have consistently highlighted the way in which intersubjective development involves ongoing processes of destruction and recognition, of breakdown and restoration of recognition, rather than positing an ideal development of mutual recognition.
