Advances in Relational Psychotherapy

The Concept of the Third

In this presentation, Jessica Benjamin explains her conceptualization of the ‘third’ and its application to psychotherapy. She regards the creation of thirdness as an intersubjective process that is constituted in early, pre-symbolic experiences of accommodation, mutuality and the intention to recognize and be recognized by the other; it is a relationship of mutual recognition in which each person experiences the other as a ‘like subject’ yet has a distinct, separate center of feeling and perception. In contrast to the notion of the intersubjective as a system of reciprocal mutual influence, the term ‘third’ is used by her to convey the representation of a potential relationship that we use to break out of the reciprocal lock of complementarity.