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we need to be aware of how conditional and fragile are our efforts to counter destructiveness, and this fragility makes for a tension that is extraordinarily difficult to maintain, in theory and in practice. But there is no other point to clinical work than to aim for a mutual understanding that ameliorates destructiveness—not in a one-time overcoming but an incremental, imperfect process that requires continual self-correction and modulation of our course. (299)Intersubjective relations cannot, of course, be free of destruction.

“I might see Winnicott’s thinking as containing competing, contradictory strains, some in favor of maternal subjectivity and others idealizing primary maternal preoccupation. These contradictions have bequeathed to us a clinical tension that we continue to debate strenuously (as Mitchell, 1997, makes clear discussing Slochower) between the need to submerge ourselves in the patient’s experience and the importance of providing an experience of otherness.”“There is an important distinction in my mind between the interpersonal and the intersubjective.

294 - “Mitchell’s summary of my ideas on gender is quite syntonic with my own view, and I believe that here we are largely in agreement.” 295 - “From the beginning, I have argued that the basic positions of gender polarity, femininity and masculinity as we know them, are constituted through a process of splitting.” 296 - “Here I come to Butler’s essay, which poses quite different challenges and criticisms than does Mitchell’s. Indeed, it seems to read me in a way quite opposite from his.

"I felt that the focus on the analyst's knowing "what's going on here now" implied a subtle form of objectivism, enhanced by disregard of the patient's subjectivity and deep unconscious motives" (292)"These contradictions have bequeathed to us a clinical tension that we continue to debate strenuously (as Mitchell, 1997, makes clear discussing Slochower) between the need to submerge ourselves in the patient's experience and the importance of providing an experience of otherness.

"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.

So what is intersubjectivity and how is it related to domination and recognition? And, what are those terms?“There is something more than internal object relations—and this is important in relation to some of Butler’s criticisms as well. If we take the tension between recognition and omnipotence to be the inner conflict that shapes the interpersonal world, then I think we are taking the intersubjective to be an axis that cuts across intrapsychic and interpersonal.” (Benjamin, 2000, p.