Beyond Doer and Done To: Recognition Theory, Intersubjectivity and the Third

Beyond Doer and Done To is Jessica Benjamin's book-length statement of the theory of mutual recognition she first set out in The Bonds of Love. It gathers and reworks papers written after her 2004 essay of the same name, which opens the book. Its central argument is that recognition between two subjects tends to break down into a complementary relation of "doer and done to", and that thirdness is what restores it. Benjamin traces how the Third develops in early life as experience alternates between recognition and its breakdown: first a rhythmic third of attunement between infant and caregiver, then a moral third of shared values and acknowledgment. She shows the same movement inside the psychoanalytic relationship, where impasse and enactment are its forms. The book stresses the power of acknowledgment, including the analyst's acknowledgment of error, to repair a relationship and to heal both individual and social trauma. It carries the theory from the consulting room to social conflict and the witnessing of collective trauma. After an introduction on recognition, intersubjectivity and the Third, the chapters take up acknowledgment, the failed witness and the fear of harming; mutual recognition, vulnerability and asymmetry; excess, affect and gender complementarity in sexuality; the uses of enactment and play; negation and the lawful world; and the moral Third, with witnessing that goes beyond the logic of "only one can live". The publisher addresses it to psychoanalytic therapists and to theorists in the humanities and social sciences.