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CPD Credits
2
Event Type
Recorded Event
Location
Your TR Together account
Standard
£52.50
Trainee/NHS
£44.63
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Dr Jessica Benjamin on Intersubjectivity, Thirdness, and Mutual Recognition

With Dr Jessica Benjamin & Dr. Zack Eleftheriadou (Chair)

Jessica Benjamin’s work on intersubjectivity has been pivotal to the field of relational psychoanalysis, as well as social thought. During this workshop, Dr Benjamin shares ideas from her seminal 2018 book Beyond Doer and Done to: Recognition Theory, Intersubjectivity and the Third. A ‘doer/done to’ dynamic is where each person in a dyad, e.g. therapist and client, feels pulled or pushed by the other, rather than their own agent. This generates a one-way, reactive or complementary process instead of creating an intersubjective ‘Third’ space. ‘Thirdness’ is experienced when both people in a dyad hold a mutual recognition of the other person’s subjectivity and recognise an ongoing, shared, process of reciprocal influence between them.

Dr Benjamin outlines her theory of mutual recognition, which tracks the development of the Third in the infant through the caregiver relationship, and the movement between recognition and breakdown in the self-other relationship. She demonstrates how it parallels the therapeutic relationship. The emphasis is on the importance of the analyst’s surrender to a breakdown in mutuality during enactments and impasses. This includes the role of using their subjectivity in the process of repairing the co-created relationship, to recover the Third as a transformational space for healing.

Dr Benjamin offers a talk for 1 hour and 10 minutes followed by a 35 minute group discussion.

On purchasing a ticket for the event you will receive a copy of the first chapter of Dr Benjamin's book which is titled 'Beyond Doer and Done to: An intersubjective view of thirdness' located in your TR Together account.

Programme

Introductions
Moving Out of the Doer and Done to Relationship

In this session Dr. Benjamin explores intersubjectivity through mutuality/rhythmicity and differentiation/survival. Central to this is the recognition that both minds in a relationship share experiences, and that distress is acknowledged without causing harm. Clients learn their needs don’t overwhelm the therapist, allowing emotional reactions to be integrated into the therapeutic space. Secondly Dr Benjamin will consider how the therapist’s surrender impacts relational practice, focusing on enactment and impasses. By acknowledging ruptures and working through collisions together, therapists and clients create a safe intersubjective space, transforming "doer and done-to" dynamics into opportunities for repair and relational healing.

Short Break 
Discussion
End

Jessica Benjamin

Jessica Benjamin is best known as the author of The Bonds of Love (1988), which brought a feminist perspective and intersubjective recognition theory into the psychoanalytic field. More recently she published the influential paper “Beyond Doer and Done To: An Intersubjective View of Thirdness” (2004), the basis for her recent book Beyond Doer and done To: Recognition Theory, Intersubjectivity and the Third (2018). This book emphasizes the importance of acknowledgment in therapeutic interaction and in relation to trauma, including collective historical trauma. In addition, she is the author of   Like Subjects, Love Objects (1995); and Shadow of the Other (1998). She teaches and supervises at the New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis as well as at the Stephen Mitchell Relational Studies Center of which she is a co-founder.  She co-directed and initiated a project for acknowledgment between Israeli and Palestinian mental health professionals during the period 2003-2011.  Recently she has written a series of papers on the psychological aspects of domination and destructiveness manifest in the current social world.

Zack Eleftheriadou

Dr Zack Eleftheriadou is a Chartered Counselling Psychologist and Fellow of the British Psychological Society (HCPC reg). She has trained as a child and parent-infant psychotherapist (CPJA/UKCP) and as an adult psychoanalytic psychotherapist (CPJA/UKCP & Tavistock Society/BPC). Zack runs the consultancy service ‘Noema Psychology and Psychotherapy’, providing psychotherapy, supervision and teaching. She lectures in the following areas: developmental issues, trauma/complex trauma, migration/cross-cultural work and the ‘replacement child’ psychodynamics. She has published widely, including the text ‘Psychotherapy and Culture’. She is member of The Bowlby Centre and is a visiting external examiner for Doctoral projects across the UK. She feels passionate about early intervention and regularly presents on ‘the psychology of the baby’, for health professionals and psychotherapists. She has previously worked in several London NHS Hospitals and charities, such as Nafsiyat Intercultural Therapy Centre and Freedom from Torture. She is also currently an honourary psychotherapist of the Tavistock Complex Trauma Service.

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