Jessica Benjamin’s theory of mutual recognition and thirdness has been central to the development of relational psychoanalysis and feminist-informed clinical theory. Across works such as The Bonds of Love (1988), Like Subjects, Love Objects (1995), and Shadow of the Other (1998), Benjamin repositions subjectivity as a fundamental relational phenomenon, arising not in isolation but through a dynamic encounter between self and other. Her notion of thirdness—an intersubjective space in which domination is suspended and recognition becomes reciprocal—functions as both an ethical aspiration and a clinical ideal.
While Benjamin’s model has expanded the conceptual and moral horizons of psychoanalysis, this article seeks to examine its limitations. Drawing on Freudian and Lacanian theory—alongside broader psychoanalytic perspectives on psychic development, clinical asymmetry, and social structure—this article argues that mutual recognition, while ethically compelling, is not universally attainable. Rather, it is shaped and often constrained by unconscious dynamics, symbolic mediation, and institutional power—factors that complicate or foreclose the very reciprocity that Benjamin envisions.
The Ethical Ideal of Mutual Recognition
Benjamin’s vision of mutual recognition is grounded in an ethical framework reminiscent of Kant’s imperative to treat others not merely as means but as ends in themselves (Kant, 1785/1996). She posits that genuine subjectivity is possible only when one is recognised by another who is, in turn, affirmed as a subject: “To exist in relation means to sustain the tension of acknowledging the other as a separate subject” (Benjamin, 1995, p. 33). This is the relational foundation of thirdness—a shared psychic space in which subjects negotiate autonomy and connection without resorting to control.
However, this vision relies on a particular form of psychic and moral development. Benjamin herself acknowledges that thirdness entails a “surrender of omnipotence” (1998, p. 28), an act that presupposes affective regulation, moral restraint, and the internal capacity to prioritise relational integrity over self-interest; a developmental trajectory that, at times, resembles the ethical demands placed on the therapist, yet imagined as universally attainable. In psychoanalytic terms, such surrender requires a well-developed superego capable of mediating between desire and responsibility.
The emergence of this ethical subjectivity, however, is far from guaranteed. It is shaped by early relational environments, social conditioning, and cultural norms. Even in ideal circumstances—families committed to emotional attunement, educational systems prioritising empathy—outcomes vary widely. Children raised in the same environment often develop divergent capacities for relationality. Thus, while Benjamin’s vision is ethically rich, its generalisability remains uncertain.
Structural Power and the Limits of Reciprocity
While Benjamin offers important insights into how domination operates within intimate relationships, her account engages less fully with the broader structures that frame recognition. Recognition, as a social act, is not neutral—it is embedded in systems of power, ideology, and institutional mediation. Michel Foucault’s (1977) analysis of disciplinary power reminds us that subjects are formed not only through interpersonal dynamics but through normative regimes that govern what counts as recognisable.
Similarly, Frantz Fanon (1967) shows that the colonised subject is not simply unrecognised but misrecognised—reflected back through the gaze of a system that reduces and instrumentalises. In such contexts, recognition is not emancipatory but alienating. These insights suggest that mutual recognition is not always blocked by individual pathology or relational failure, but by the structural conditions under which subjectivity itself is produced.
This dynamic plays out in various global and institutional contexts. A compelling example of structurally mediated misrecognition, in Fanons’s terms, can be found in the UK’s treatment of asylum seekers. The relationship between individuals seeking asylum and the Home Office exemplifies a profound asymmetry of power in which recognition operates not as affirmation, but as bureaucratic categorisation. Asylum seekers are routinely suspended in prolonged periods of legal and existential limbo—awaiting decisions while lacking social status, legal protections, or the right to work.
Rather than being recognised as subjects with agency, rights, and voice, they are positioned as cases to be processed, surveilled, or managed within an administrative system that defines them primarily through their exclusion. Their identity becomes synonymous with their legal precarity. This form of recognition is not relational or ethical but regulatory and disciplinary—an act of naming that simultaneously negates. In this context, recognition becomes a tool of subjectivation through exclusion, echoing Foucault’s insight that institutional power operates precisely through its capacity to define and delimit the subject (Foucault, 1977). This is a structural, not individual, failure of recognition. I discussed the situation of asylum seekers in the UK in greater detail in my article Outlanders in Limbo: The Maze of Asylum in the UK and the Politics of Exclusion (Saeedi, 2025).
Maternal Recognition and the Superego’s Double Bind
Benjamin’s model of mutual recognition rests on the assumption that subjects can develop the moral and affective maturity required to suspend omnipotence and recognise the other as an autonomous being. Yet this level of psychic development—particularly the formation of a superego capable of mediating between desire and relational responsibility—is highly contingent. In Freudian terms, the superego emerges through processes of loss, discipline, and internalised authority (Freud, 1923/1961), and its effects are not uniform. A rigid superego may foster empathy and moral restraint in some, but guilt, inhibition, or rebellion in others. The psychic capacities required for mutual recognition—emotional regulation, self-limitation, reflexivity—cannot be assumed as universal, even within similar developmental contexts.
Even if, hypothetically, the caregiver were able to fully suspend her own subjectivity in order to recognise the child as an autonomous agent, this ideal raises further complications. Without encountering psychic limits or the caregiver’s boundaries, the child may not sufficiently develop a sense of relational responsibility or ethical attunement to the other. Research by Eunice Wetzel and Richard W. Robinson (2016) suggests that both permissive and authoritarian parenting styles can contribute to narcissistic development in children. While permissive parenting, marked by constant approval and indulgence, may foster egocentric behaviours and an inflated sense of entitlement, authoritarian parenting—characterised by excessive criticism—can lead to the development of defensive grandiosity and fragile self-worth. These findings complicate any assumption that the mere absence of domination guarantees psychological health or ethical maturity.
In light of this, the asymmetry between caregiver and child appears not simply as a barrier to recognition but as a necessary—and ethically complex—structure within which subjectivity is transmitted, modelled, and negotiated. The notion that recognition can occur without any imposition is, therefore, not only developmentally questionable but potentially counterproductive to the child’s emerging ethical orientation.
These complexities become particularly salient in Benjamin’s account of the maternal relation. Drawing from psychoanalytic understandings of early development, one could argue that the emergence of subjectivity necessarily involves the imposition of the caregiver’s—typically the mother’s—subjectivity. After the initial oceanic feeling of undifferentiated unity, the child must enter the Symbolic in order to differentiate self from other and acquire an identity (Freud, 1930). This process of symbolic entry is inherently mediated by the caregiver’s language, values, and unconscious positioning. In this sense, the imposition of maternal subjectivity is not a failure of recognition, but a structural condition of subject formation itself.
Subjectivity and Subjection in Symbolic Order
Benjamin’s model encounters further challenges when considered in relation to the Symbolic and broader social structures. In this view, subjectivity is constituted through entry into the Symbolic order—the domain of language, law, and the Big Other. To be a subject is already to be situated within a structure that defines what can be said, thought, and recognised. As Lacan (1953) notes, the subject “receives his own message back from the Other in an inverted form” (p. 229). Recognition, here, is always misrecognition (méconnaissance), because it is mediated by language and the unconscious.
From this view, the subject cannot relate to the other in a space of pure reciprocity, because the Symbolic introduces asymmetry and alienation into all relational encounters. What appears as recognition is already shaped by the Other’s desire, the symbolic matrix in which both subjects are inscribed. Benjamin’s thirdness, then, may be viewed less as a realisable intersubjective condition and more as an ethical aspiration constrained by the structure of language and the unconscious.
This isn’t meant to invalidate the value of her model, but rather to question its practicality within the psychic framework established in Symbolic. While Benjamin emphasises the mutual constitution of subjects through recognition, Lacanian theory foregrounds the impossibility of full mutuality within the Symbolic. The two positions are not merely different—they are, in some respects, structurally incompatible.
This logic can be observed in the sphere of labour relations. The employer–employee relationship is formally structured by recognition—contracts, evaluations, institutional roles—but this recognition is deeply asymmetrical. Employees are recognised as functional units within pre-set frameworks: wages are fixed, decision-making is often top-down, and precarious workers are easily replaced. The power bias is prevalent in almost all organisational and institutional structures, creating a relations based on mutual interest among groups that identify with each other versus the other groups, such as managers versus staff. Such instances demonstrate that recognition primarily functions as categorisation and labelling within the Symbolic rather than ethical mutual understanding and a shared interest for both parties or all involved.
A further instance of structurally mediated recognition can be observed in the domains of counselling, psychotherapy, and mental health, which are closely related to Benjamin’s field of expertise. While the therapeutic space is often recognised as a site of empathic attunement and mutual regard, entry into the profession itself is shaped by stringent symbolic criteria. To be recognised as a qualified therapist, one must complete specific educational requirements, accumulate supervised clinical hours, and obtain accreditation from recognised professional bodies. This process goes beyond just gaining work experience; it involves acquiring the symbolic power and positional authority associated with the role of a therapist within the system. In essence, it’s about obtaining approval and recognition from the Other. These institutional recognitions are not simply markers of competence—they carry with them implicit assumptions about class, legitimacy, and authority. They also influence how therapists are perceived: the kinds of clients they attract, the fees they can charge, the professional circles they enter, and their broader career trajectory.
Now, one may have extensive experience or deep insight into mental health, yet without meeting formalised requirements, one cannot be “recognised” as a therapist or anything equal to that in a societal structure. This lack of recognition significantly impacts their position, career, salary, and other aspects of their life, leaving little room for negotiation. This context highlights how recognition is already framed within the symbolic system that defines a subject’s subjectivity. The concept of mutual recognition is inherently skewed from the start, already filtered through systemic inequalities and bureaucratic authority.
Conclusion: Toward a Tragic Ethics of Relation
Jessica Benjamin’s intersubjective ethics offers a compelling reconfiguration of psychoanalytic thought. Her emphasis on relationality, mutuality, and the ethical significance of recognition poses an important challenge to the individualism and hierarchical models that underpin both classical psychoanalysis and broader sociopolitical imaginaries. Yet, as this critique has shown, her theory remains marked by a series of unresolved tensions: it idealises a mode of reciprocity that is developmentally uncommon, structurally constrained, and psychically ambivalent.
Rather than discarding the concept of recognition altogether, it may be more generative to reframe it within the contours of a tragic ethics—an ethics that begins not with the presumption of mutuality, but with its constitutive impossibility. Such an approach would acknowledge that symmetrical recognition is rarely, if ever, achievable within existing psychic and structural configurations, while still sustaining the ethical imperative to respond to the other. In this sense, recognition becomes not a site of relational resolution, but a locus of ethical tension—a space in which the subject must act, not despite, but through the impossibility of fully knowing or being known.
References
- Benjamin, J. (1988). The Bonds of Love: Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and the Problem of Domination. New York: Pantheon.
- Benjamin, J. (1995). Like Subjects, Love Objects: Essays on Recognition and Sexual Difference. New Haven: Yale University Press.
- Benjamin, J. (1998). Shadow of the Other: Intersubjectivity and Gender in Psychoanalysis. New York: Routledge.
- Fanon, F. (1967). Black Skin, White Masks (C. L. Markmann, Trans.). New York: Grove Press.
- Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (A. Sheridan, Trans.). New York: Pantheon.
- Freud, S. (1961). The Ego and the Id (J. Strachey, Trans.). In The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (Vol. 19). London: Hogarth Press. (Original work published 1923)
- Freud, S. (1930/1961). Civilization and its discontents (J. Strachey, Trans.). New York: W. W. Norton. (Original work published 1930)
- Kant, I. (1996). Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (M. Gregor, Trans. & Ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Original work published 1785)
- Wetzel, Eunike, and Richard W. Robins. “Are Parenting Practices Associated with the Development of Narcissism? Findings from a Longitudinal Study of Mexican-origin
Youth.” Journal of Research in Personality (2016)
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