Intersubjectivity, otherness, and thirdness: A necessary relationship

The author proposes an interplay among the notions of otherness, intersubjectivity and thirdness with its coincidences and oppositions. Its polysemic nature is analyzed in this paper. The relation internal world-external world is at stake and concerns both the construction of subjectivity as well as the way the analytic relation is deemed to assume. This review focuses on the psychoanalytic developments from Freud to posfreudian and contemporary authors plus, at the same time, interdisciplinary proposals are also included. It is also revisited the notion of "analytic field", proposed by Willy and Madeleine Baranger who, early as 1961-62, underlined the transition from "the unipersonal to the intersubjective", emphasizing that this was an expression of a change in the understanding of the analytic treatment. In this paper, the author argues that the concept of otherness introduces a symbolic aspect of decentring into the seeming interactive symmetry of intersubjectivity. At the same time, it is stressed that thirdness places a wedge into the between-subjects, which opens the way from and to recognition of the other and others.