Solving the Problems of Duality: the Third and Self-Consciousness

Abstract

Locating the concept of the third in the debate about countertransference that began in the 1950s, the authors maintain that it originated to solve problems stemming from the recognition that the analytic encounter takes place between two individual subjects. This recognition can lead to discomfort for the analyst, once objective criteria to interpret reality have been lost due to adhesion to a dialectical constructionist perspective; it also implies a deeper involvement arising from the abandonment of neutrality. The concept of the third is often invoked to help avoid these risks. However, the authors maintain that only the human subject itself can grasp the self reflexively; this view has a referent in the Hegelian concept of self-consciousness and is also supported by the findings of infant research.

Organizational Change and the Analytic Third: Locating and Attending to Unconscious Organizational Psychodynamics

“…The notion of the analytic third (as self-consciousness) resolves the problem of duality -such as oppression and violence in the grasp of dominantsubmissive dyads, from lovers to leaders and followers in hierarchic structures Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------161 of power and authority (Benjamin, 1988;Minolli and Tricoli, 2004). Owing to the prevalence of unconscious distortion and manipulation in object relations and to (not necessarily pathological) everyday regressive psychodynamic processes of splitting and projective identification, the concept of the analytic third offers perspective in theory and practice.…”

“…Much like Ogden's notion of ''making psychological room'' for the other, for Minolli and Tricoli (2004) this expansion of mental space or thirdness comes along with the development of Hegelian (1807) self-consciousness. In their discussion of the concept of the third in psychoanalysis, they remind us that new concepts emerge in the history of ideas when a problem exists that needs to be solved, and according to the authors, psychoanalysis has come up with the concept of the third to solve the problems of duality.…”

“…Regardless of whether we call these forces of human nature dialectical tensions, paradoxes, splits and fragments, or simply conflicts, one observes the emergence of a third dimension or mode of experience, and it is in this intermediate area that things actually happen, and it is within this psychological space that the deeper work of organizational analysis and change occurs. In this paper, I address the concept of the analytic third (Ogden, 1994) or the third (also referred to as thirdness, triangular space, and the third subject) in contemporary (two-person) object relational psychoanalysis (Winnicott, 1971;Lacan, 1975;Ogden, 1994Ogden, , 2004Cavell, 1998;Mitchell and Aron, 1999;Benjamin, 2004;Britton, 2004;Gerson, 2004;Green, 2004;Minolli and Tricoli, 2004;Zweibel, 2004). I suggest that the psychoanalytic concept of the third represents the focal point for studying and attending to unconscious…”

Identity and relational psychoanalysis

“…Nevertheless, were I to stop here, we would have no psychoanalytical topics in dealing with identity, because there is no assumption of conflict and of the unconscious yet. The unconscious or, more precisely, as Billig (38) put it, repression, was Freud's fundamental discovery and it has to be preserved from the increasing interpersonal or environmental biased interpretations in current psychoanalysis.…”

Michele Minolli: in ricordo di un Maestro

“…Nevertheless, up until the 2000s the definition of I-Subject remained clearly identified with its psychic dimension and the operative concepts remained those of classical psychoanalytic tradition, of desire and defence, of identity, unconscious strategies and conflict, with reference to the Hegelian dialectic of self-consciousness (Minolli & Tricoli, 2004). The unity of the subject was placed next to the sense of Self introduced by Stern (1985), to the idea of a subjectivity as the core of the identity of a person (Minolli, 2004).…”