Jessica Benjamin

A relational psychoanalysis perspective on the necessity of acknowledging failure in order to restore the facilitating and containing features of the intersubjective relationship (the shared third)

Relational psychoanalysis has emphasized that the analyst’s awareness of her failures in recognition and hurtful re-opening of old wounds requires of her an internal struggle with self-regulation, with her own shame and guilt. This struggle takes place in the watchful presence of someone who is (sometimes hypervigilantly) listening to and monitoring the signs of the analyst’s internal state. If, in response to the patient’s hyper-arousal, the analyst retreats from the ‘music’ of mutual regulation (Knoblauch, 2000) into a dissociative use of observation in order to calm down, the patient can feel it. If, however, we are mindful of our failures, gradually we will learn together to recover from ruptures in attunement, and thus become sensitive to and use more effectively the inexplicable gaps created by the patient’s unintegrated or warring self-parts and the analyst’s failure to contain them. Thus moments of excess that fail to evoke a mirroring knowledge can serve instead to signal the unformulated, undifferentiated malaise, despair or fear. This perspective on ruptures represents an amplification of my original articulation of the process of mutual recognition as one of breakdown and restoration of intersubjective space (Benjamin, 1988). This expanded relational perspective includes the awareness of multiple self-parts that create different dyadic pairings within the same relationship and a view of intersubjectivity that emphasizes not just the fact of mutual influence (Stolorow and Atwood) but the consciousness that that there is a bi-directional dance between patient and analyst that each person registers differently – a cocreated dance governed by what we call the third (Ogden, 1994). In previous discussions of the intersubjective third I have distinguished between ‘a primordial third’, which refers to the musical or rhythmic exchange of gestures between caretaker and child as well as the procedural principles of lawful relating that underlie it, and a ‘symbolic third’, which makes use of more developed narrative elements and involves procedural rules based on consensus, negotiation, and recognition, especially recognition of the other’s separate subjectivity (Benjamin, 2004). Because of the inevitability that things will sometimes go wrong, that we will enact frightening and shameful aspects of our internal world that both Int J Psychoanal (2009) 90:441–450 doi: 10.1111/j.1745-8315.2009.00163.x

Father and daughter: Identification with difference—a contribution to gender heterodoxy

This paper reinterprets the historical problem of penis envy, that is, the girls wish to be masculine, in terms of a developmental need to identify with father. Many of the problems posed by earlier analyses of femininity can be clarified by recognizing that before the girl “turns”; to the oedipal father as love object, she looks to the rapprochement father for identification. Identification is not merely an internal structure, it is a relationship in which the subject recognizes herself or himself in the other. In rapprochement, love of the father, who symbolically represents the outside world, takes the place of the practicing toddlers “love affair with the world.”; This identificatory love of the father, initially noticed in boys by Freud and later authors, is often frustrated by the fathers absence or inability to recognize the daughter. This frustrated longing takes the penis as its symbol of likeness. The pre‐oedipal over‐inclusive phase of identification with the other sex parent is not superced...

The Rhythm of Recognition Comments on the Work of Louis Sander

This commentary considers Sanders contributions to our thinking about recognition, with particular emphasis on his idea of rhythmicity as a major organizing principle. The author suggests ways in which rhythmicity contributes to our apprehension of and participation in the third, that aspect of the intersubjective relationship which is cocreated and yet lawful. Both Sanders research and his contemporary reflections represent an important effort to unite our understanding of energy and information as complementary aspects of the same communication process.

Response to Commentaries by Mitchell and by Butler

This paper is a response to a discussion of my work by Stephen Mitchell and Judith Butler. I treat number of issues raised by those writers. Chief among the issues raised by Mitchell are the status of drive theory and the interrelation of the intersubjective and the intrapsychic. I clarify that, although I do value the paradoxical tension between opposites in relation to many binaries, I do not aim to preserve Freuds instinct theory alongside current views of Object relations. However, I do believe that intersubjectivity theory should posit an inherent conflict in the mind that is not simply a reflection of Object relations, that is, experiences with outside others. Rather, the inherent difficulty in recognizing the other, and the attendant problems of splitting and destructiveness, are crucial aspects of intersubjective theory. Precisely for this reason I reject Butlers claim that my theory does not see destruction and breakdown as essential to the movement of recognition. I see my own intentions as closer to those expressed by Butlers own statements about the relation of destruction and recognition. However, the faith that the clinical endeavor can overcome destructiveness may be the real point of contention. Another important difference relates to the question of the triad and the third. I accept Butlers view that I emphasize the dyad over the triad and attempt to take up some of her questions about triadic relations and the nature of thirdness.

From Many into One: Attention, Energy, and the Containing of Multitudes

This paper is an effort to describe and express and the tension between the observing mind and the “wisdom mind,” which has its taproots in the deep and unformulated experience of connectedness. Nominally about the process of writing as a psychoanalyst, it is more like my personal “Credo” in relation to the work of psychoanalysis, the work of writing, and the work of living with contradictions—life. In it I try to bring together disparate reflections, to illustrate in the writing itself the process of making “many into one.” Because so much of this essay relates to themes in Mannie Ghents work, including his work on surrender and his “Credo,” it seemed to be appropriate to offer it to readers of this issue dedicated to his memory.

Where's the Gap and What's the Difference?

Abstract The relational turn in psychoanalysis brought into the foreground the interactive engagement between analyst and patient as a cocreated bidirectional process. It has developed a theory of dissociation and focused our attention on the ways in which multiple self-parts or self-states within each person interact. The authors perspective also emphasizes the importance of rupture and repair in the building of a new attachment relationship, as first theorized in the mother-infant relation. Depicting enactments as part of a necessary process of encountering otherwise inaccessible self-states and the relations they presume, this perspective allows for more “messiness” and what Stern has called an attitude of “courting surprise.” It includes the proposition that such enactment can produce change through new experiences of lawfulness and recognition of feelings and intentions in an attachment relationship.

The 'too muchness' of excitement: sexuality in light of excess, attachment and affect regulation

This paper brings together contemporary thinking about early attachment and affect regulation with our clinical and theoretical understanding of the problems of adult sexuality. In addition to recent theories of affect regulation and attachment, we incorporate Laplanches idea of ‘excess’, which was an important transitional concept integrating real experience with fantasy in sexuality. We elaborate the idea of excess –‐ ‘too‐muchness’ –‐ to illuminate the early overwhelming of the psyche that affects the formation of sexuality. Linked to recent theoretical developments, this idea helps to grasp the relationship between sexual excitement and early affect regulation, showing how excitement becomes dangerous, thus impeding or distorting desire. The ‘too‐muchness’ of excitement recalls the experience of being a stimulated, overwhelmed, unsoothed child and influences later inability to tolerate sexual arousal and the excitement affect. A clinical case illustrates this connection between attachment trauma, anxiety about sexuality, as well as shameful experiences of gender identity as an area of trauma. We emphasize the importance of working through the terrors and desires of the mother–baby relationship as they emerge in the transference–countertransference in order to develop the ability to hold excitement and stimulation without experiencing the too‐much as the intolerable. This includes the working‐through of ruptures related to overstimulation as well as the delicate balance of attention to fantasy and intersubjective work in the transference.

Psychoanalysis as a vocation

Psychoanalysis may be seen as caught between two different trends of disenchanted modernity: rationalization, which leads to the framing of our work as a professional discipline subordinate to the dictates of instrumental rationality, and self‐analysis, which frees us from the dictates of orthodoxy, inequality, and authority. But a further difficulty lies within the aspect of enlightenment, which has not only provided a greater role for our subjectivity but disguised relations of authority, conformity, and objectiflcation in our work. Psychoanalysis has objectified the other while idealizing its knowledge as objective, has paradoxically denied the very subjectivity that must serve as the source of the analysts knowledge. However, the reaction against this condition, which may tend to produce counter‐ideals of not‐knowing and mutuality, must also be carefully deconstructed. Differences in the meaning given by different schools to the use of the analysts subjectivity suggest that pluralism will make new k...

Creating an Intersubjective Reality: Commentary on Paper by Arnold Rothstein

The author discusses Arnold Rothsteins paper “Compromise Formation Theory: An Intersubjective Dimension” and challenges his definition of intersubjectivity. She offers a perspective in which the import of intersubjectivity theory is less to dissolve the notion of objectivity than to grasp processes of mutual engagement, regulation, and recognition. While it is true that the recognition that the analyst is also a subject and therefore does not have exclusive knowledge is an important shift in the psychoanalytic paradigm, the author suggests that the intersubjective is far more encompassing than this. Intersubjective theory emphasizes the active creation of consensus or conflict about reality rather than merely the recognition that the analysts perspective on reality is subjective. This cocreation produces a different emotional experience of connection, not merely a change in the quality of insight. Finally, Rothsteins case illustrates how he responds to the need for recognition and regulation. He shows us how focusing on the procedural allowed him to make an intersubjective shift, not simply an intrapsychic interpretation of compromise formation.

Terror and Guilt: Beyond Them and Us

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