Beyond Doer and Done to Recognition Theory, Intersubjectivity and the Third

In Beyond Doer and Done To, Jessica Benjamin, author of the path-breaking Bonds of Love, expands her theory of mutual recognition and its breakdown into the complementarity of "doer and done to." Her innovative theory charts the growth of the Third in early development through the movement between recognition and breakdown, and shows how it parallels the enactments in the psychoanalytic relationship. Benjamin?s recognition theory illuminates the radical potential of acknowledgment in healing both individual and social trauma, in creating relational repair in the transformational space of thirdness. Benjamin?s unique formulations of intersubjectivity make essential reading for both psychoanalytic therapists and theorists in the humanities and social sciences.

Introduction: recognition, intersubjectivity and the Third

1. Beyond doer and done to: an intersubjective view of thirdness

2. Our appointment in Thebes: acknowledgment, the failed witness and fear of harming

3. Transformations in thirdness: mutual recognition, vulnerability and asymmetry

I. You’ve come a long way baby

II. Responsibility, vulnerability and the analyst’s surrender to change

4. An Other take on the riddle of sex: excess, affect and gender complementarity

5. Paradox and play: the uses of enactment

I. The paradox is the thing

II. Enactment, play and the work

III. Putting music and lyrics together

6. Playing at the edge: negation, recognition and the lawful world

I. Beginning with No…and Yes

II. Trauma, violence and recognition of the Other (Me)

7. Beyond "Only one can live": witnessing, acknowledgment and the moral Third

Jessica Benjamin, Ph.D., is a psychoanalyst and supervising faculty member at New York University Postdoctoral Psychology Program and the Stephen Mitchell Relational Studies Center in New York. She is author of the Routledge title Shadow of the Other.