Intersubjectivity and the Shared Third Perspective in the Therapeutic Relationship

Abstract

The relationship between two people and their own individual subjectivity, each with their own mental processes, requires mutual recognition of the existence, needs, and perspective of the other. The recognition of subjectivity in the therapeutic relationship is a co-created process that leads to a shared third perspective from which to reflect about the relationship and regulate the conflicts of the dyad. In integrative psychotherapy, the recognition of the client and the therapist as two different subjectivities co-creating the therapeutic relationship is expressed through inquiry, attunement, and involvement with the relationship’s four components: acknowledgment, normalization, validation, and presence (Erskine, 1997, 2015; Erskine & Trautmann, 1996). The client may bring through transference with the therapist old relationships in which his or her subjective perspective was not sufficiently taken into account. The intersubjective therapeutic relationship is a co-created process in which the two participating subjectivities experience a “shared third perspective,” from which both can reflect on their own relationship and feel a sense of “we.” Recognizing that the client has a separate mind with their own needs and experiences is key to treating disorders of the self, fostering the evolution of the subject from his or her arrest at an experience of disconnected emerging self-states, such as psychosis, Autism spectrum disorder, Asperger’s syndrome, etc., acquiring a coherent a nuclear self and, beyond, experiencing an intersubjective and verbal self (Stern, 1985).