Benjamin, J. (2004). Beyond doer and done to: An intersubjective view of thirdness.

7. I think in terms of thirdness as a quality or experience of intersubjective relatedness that has as its correlate a certain kind of internal mental space; it is closely related to Winnicott’s idea of potential or transitional space.

8.  In my thinking, the term surrender refers to a certain letting go of the self, and thus also implies the ability to take in the other’s point of view or reality. Thus, surrender refers us to recognition—being able to sustain connectedness to the other’s mind while accepting his separateness and difference. Surrender implies freedom from any intent to control or coerce.

10. With this negative of the third (perhaps it could be called “the negative third”), there is an erasure of the in-between —an inverse mirror relation, a complementary dyad concealing an unconscious symmetry.

10. Attributing blame to the self actually weakens one’s sense of being a responsible agent.

11. The experience of surviving breakdown into complementarity, or twoness, and subsequently of communicating and restoring dialogue—each person surviving for the other—is crucial to therapeutic action. From it emerges a more advanced form of thirdness, based on what we might call the symbolic or interpersonal third.

13. This ability to maintain internal awareness, to sustain the tension of difference between my needs and yours while still being attuned to you, forms the basis of what I call the moral third or the third in the one. 

16. The perversion of the moral third accompanies the kill-or-be-killed complementarity and marks the absence of recognition of the other’s separateness, the space that permits desire, the acceptance of loss.

17. For the symbolic third to actually work as a true third—rather than as a set of perverse or persecutory demands, as we saw in the case of Rob—requires integration of the capacity for accommodation to a mutually created set of expectations

17. Sander (2002) illustrated the value of specific recognition and of accommodation by studying how neonates who were fed on demand adapted more rapidly to the circadian rhythm than those fed on schedule. When the significant other is a recognizing one who surrenders to the rhythm of the baby, a co-created rhythm can begin to evolve. As the caregiver accommodates, so does the baby. The basis for this mutual accommodation is probably the inbuilt tendency to respond symmetrically, to match and mirror; in effect, the baby matches the mother’s matching, much as one person’s letting go releases the other. This might be seen as the beginning of interaction in accord with the principle of mutual accommodation, which entails not imitation, but a hard-wired pull to get the two organisms into alignment, to mirror, match, or be in synch. 

18. Action-reaction characterizes our experience of complementary twoness, the one-way direction; by contrast, a shared third is experienced as a cooperative endeavor.

18. As I have stated previously (Benjamin 1999, 2002), the thirdness of attuned play resembles musical improvisation, in which both partners follow a structure or pattern that both of them simultaneously create and surrender to, a structure enhanced by our capacity to receive and transmit at the same time in nonverbal interaction. The co-created third has the transitional quality of being both invented and discovered. To the question of “Who created this pattern, you or I?,” the paradoxical answer is “Both and neither.”

22. In a world without shared thirds, without a space of collaboration and sharing, everything is mine or yours, including the perception of reality. Only one person can eat; only one person can be right

24. rather, at this point, the principle of asymmetrical accommodation should arise from the sense of surrender to necessity, rather than from submission to another person’s tyrannical demand or an overwhelming task.

26. This intention to connect and the resulting self-observation create what I would call moral thirdness, the connection to a larger principle of necessity, rightness, or goodness.

27. The work necessary here is not that the analyst demand that the patient recognize the analyst’s subjectivity—a misunderstanding of the relational position on intersubjectivity (Orange 2002; Teicholz 2001)—but that the analyst learn to distinguish true thirdness from the self-immolating ideal of oneness that the analyst suffers as a persecutory third, blocking real self-observation. The analyst needs to work through her fear of blame, badness, and hurtfulness, which is tying both the patient and herself in knots.

29. . In this sense, the analyst’s surrender means a deep acceptance of the necessity of becoming involved in enactments and impasses. This acceptance becomes the basis for a new version of thirdness that encourages us to honestly confront our feelings of shame, inadequacy, and guilt, to tolerate the symmetrical relation we may enter into with our patients, without giving up negative capability—in short, a different kind of moral third.

30. The parental response that the child’s needs for independence or nurturance are “bad” not only invalidates needs, and not only repels the child from the parent’s mind; equally important, as Davies (2002) has shown, the parent is also subjecting the child to an invasion of the parent’s shame and badness, which also endangers the child’s mind.

31. As Bromberg (2000) pointed out, the effort to represent verbally what is going on, to engage the symbolic, can further the analyst’s dissociative avoidance of the abyss the patient is threatened by. 

32. The analyst who can acknowledge missing or failing, who can feel and express regret, helps create a system based on acknowledgment of what has been missed, both in the past and the present. There are cases in which the patient’s confrontation and the analyst’s subsequent acknowledgment of a mistake, a preoccupation, misattunement, or an emotion of his own is the crucial turning point (Jacobs 2001; Renik 1998a). For, as Davies (2002) illustrated, the patient may need the analyst to assume the burden of badness, to show her willingness to tolerate it in order to protect the patient. The analyst shoulders responsibility for hurting, even though her action represented an unavoidable piece of enactment. A dyadic system that creates a safe space for such acknowledgment of responsibility provides the basis for a secure attachment in which understanding is no longer persecutory, out-side observation, suspected of being in the service of blame. The third in the one can be based on this sense of mutual respect and identification

38. But it also shifted my receptivity to her because, paradoxically, my acceptance of my inability to find a solution alleviated my sense of helplessness. It enabled me to return to the analytic commitment not to “do” anything, but rather to contact my deep connection to her. 

40. Nonetheless, I hope I have made clear that disclosure is not a panacea, that the analyst’s acknowledgment of responsibility can take place only by working through deep anguish around feelings of destructiveness and loss