Response to Commentaries by Mitchell and by Butler

"My idea of intersubjectivity, based on a dialectic of recognition and destruction, thus grew out of this unlikely resonance between Hegel and Winnicott. As I have clarified elsewhere (Benjamin, 1999), this idea of recognition does not exactly coincide with what Mitchell calls an “authentic interpersonal encounter,” although it may encompass it. There is an important distinction in my mind between the interpersonal and the intersubjective. As Mitchell says, there is no necessary contradiction between the interpersonal and the intrapsychic, they can be seen as two dimensions of the same process by which mind interacts with the outside." Pp.293"To begin with, my essay (Benjamin, 1995) on the subject of “Recognition and Destruction” postulates that recognition is sustained only through survival of destruction; hence, destruction does essentially constitute recognition. Postulating the possibility of overcoming or surviving destruction in the analytic situation would not logically make it unessential or nonconstitutive, anymore than the species’ perpetuation of life makes death unessential or nonconstitutive of life. The necessity of struggling to survive destruction, overcome omnipotence, and reestablish recognition after breakdown is ongoing and essentially defining of recognition." Pp.298