On Recognizing the Psychoanalytic Perspective of the Other: A Discussion of “Recognition as: Intersubjective Vulnerability in the Psychoanalytic Dialogue,” by Donna Orange

Abstract

The author asks Donna Orange to practice her form of recognition in regard to other recognition theories; to “enter the bottle” of the “other's” theory—basically, Jessica Benjamin's version of intersubjectivity and mutual recognition seen through a clinical case illustrating recognition and intersubjectivity as a mutual phenomenon. The author suggests the material shows no “Hegelian imperative” for the analyst to demand a reciprocal recognition for what is given to the patient, nor an expectation of a “Buddhist-style Nirvana” of perfect “subject–to-subject” relating achieved through a “magical mutual process.” Instead, it illustrates Winnicott's “destruction and survival” as a human dynamic by which meanings are challenged and made more real. The dynamic of destruction/creation is more complex and paradoxical than the secure holding with which Orange appears to equate Winnicott's views of recognition. The larger question is whether the disparate paradigms of Orange and Benjamin can each genuinely recognize the fundamental existential truths encoded in the other.