Article
Beyond Doer and Done To: An Intersubjective View of Thirdness
In this paper, published in The Psychoanalytic Quarterly in 2004, Jessica Benjamin argues that analytic work which takes both participants, analyst and patient, as subjects needs a discipline rooted in the structural conditions of thirdness. She distinguishes two forms of the third. An early form rests on experiences of union and mutual accommodation, which she calls the one in the third. Later moral and symbolic forms introduce difference, which she calls the third in the one. In clinical work, she uses the idea of a third co-created by analyst and patient to explain two things. Impasses and enactments collapse the relationship into the twoness of complementarity, a relation of doer and done to. Recognition is then restored through surrender.
Main ideas
- Analytic work that treats analyst and patient as two participating subjectivities requires a discipline rooted in the structural conditions of thirdness.
- An early form of thirdness, the one in the third, rests on experiences of union and mutual accommodation.
- Later, moral and symbolic forms of thirdness, the third in the one, introduce difference.
- Impasses and enactments collapse the co-created third into the twoness of complementarity, of doer and done to; recognition is restored through surrender.
What it shows
- 2004
Jessica Benjamin introduced Doer and done to
Benjamin named the complementary relation of doer and done to in her 2004 paper on thirdness, where it describes the twoness of analytic impasse and enactment. Her 2017 book took it into social conflict as well.
- 2004
Jessica Benjamin introduced Thirdness
Benjamin set out her theory of thirdness in the 2004 paper, distinguishing the early one in the third from the later third in the one. The 2017 book develops the rhythmic and moral thirds.
- 2004
Thirdness diverges from Analytic third
Benjamin's thirdness builds on Ogden's analytic third but sets itself apart from it. She treats the third not as a thing co-created between analyst and patient, still less a subjugating one, but as a principle or function of surrender to a shared reality that both can recognise.
- 2004
Doer and done to opposes Thirdness
In Benjamin's account the complementary twoness of doer and done to is what thirdness is lost to: when the shared third collapses, each partner feels done to by the other, and surrender to the third restores recognition.
Thirdness derives from Mutual recognition
Benjamin's thirdness grew out of her earlier theory of mutual recognition: the third is the shared space or principle that makes recognition between two subjects possible, as the subtitle of her 2017 book on recognition theory and the third reflects.