Some thoughts on the subject and relations
10.4081/rp.2022.713
L’Autrice propone alcune riflessioni sulla declinazione teorica del rapporto tra soggetto e relazione, nel tentativo di tradurre le categorie della epistemologia della complessità nella prospettiva della Psicoanalisi della Relazione. La concezione relazionale di essere umano che ne deriva offre utili stimoli per ripensare alcuni presupposti fondamentali dell’agire clinico. A ispirare il lavoro è il contributo di Michele Minolli, che negli ultimi vent’anni si è sempre più concentrato sulla elaborazione di una teoria dell’essere umano e del suo processo di vita.
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Romina Coin
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Ricerca Psicoanalitica
dipendenza.
Pensieri su soggetto e relazione
Text.Serial.Journal
https://www.pagepress.org/socialsciences/rp
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Scritti
2022-12-30
2022-07-17
2023-01-31
2023-01-31
Ricerca Psicoanal
Romina Coin
2022/12/30
10.4081/rp.2022.713
Società Italiana di Psicoanalisi della Relazione
2037-7851
s1
dipendenza.
it
Stern, D. N. (1985). Il mondo interpersonale del bambino. Torino: Bollati Boringhieri, 1987.
Pensieri su soggetto e relazione
https://www.pagepress.org/socialsciences/rp/article/download/713/732
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                                    Ricerca Psicoanalitica | pISSN 1827-4625 | Year XXXIII, s1, 2022
                                                                            doi:10.4081/rp.2022.713


                                                                                        WRITINGS



Some thoughts on the subject and relations1

Romina Coin*




ABSTRACT. – The author proposes some reflections on the theoretical declination of the




                                                              ly
correlation between the subject and relations, in an attempt to translate the categories of the
epistemology of complexity into the perspective of the Psychoanalysis of Relations. The




                                                            on
resulting relational conception of the human being offers useful stimuli for rethinking some
fundamental assumptions of clinical action. The study was inspired by the work of Michele

                                                e
Minolli, who in the last twenty years has increasingly focused on the elaboration of a theory
                                             us
of the human being and his life process.
                                          al

Key words: Self-eco-organisation; interaction; epistemology of complexity; recognition;
dependency.
                                      ci
                                  er
                             m




Introduction
                     om




    Linking the word ‘relationship’ to ‘psychoanalysis’ represented the
                 -c




challenge that, since the 1970s, long before the publication in Italy of the
          on




works by J. Greenberg and S. Mitchell (1987), brought together the orig-
inal group of what in 1985 became the SIPRe (Società Italiana di
      N




Psicoanalisi della Relazione).
    The relationship was considered an integral dimension of a subject
observed in a ‘unitary’ perspective and redefined then as ‘I-subject’ to high-
light the difference from the concept of the ego as a psychic instance or an
abstractly understood subject. This approach has characterised a specific
area of research and intervention in SIPRe for over 50 years now,
    ‘Psychoanalysis of Relationship’ was considered an oxymoron pointing
to an horizon that was thought to be as necessary as it was inconceivable, at


    *Società Italiana di Psicoanalisi della Relazione. E-mail: romina.coin@fastwebnet.it
    1    This paper was inspired by the thoughts of Michele Minolli and the work conducted
together with a group of colleagues at the SIPRe Institute in Milan. I would like to thank
Laura Girelli, Massimo Schneider and Francesco Dettori for sharing their thoughts and sup-
port in the drafting of this paper.
110                               Romina Coin



a time when psychoanalysis was identified with an intrapsychic vision of
the human being and cultivated the conception of a cure where the analyst
was an inaccessible and anonymous figure, supposedly capable of capturing
and bringing out the origin of psychological suffering from the innermost
truths of the human mind.
    Since its beginnings, alternative visions have emerged in the psychoan-
alytic context in favour of a less individualistic and deterministic perspec-
tive of human beings, their sufferings and the possibilities of understanding
them. Even so, a need took shape, still difficult to situate in a theoretical
framework, to understand the subject and psychological therapy in a partic-
ipatory, real, embodied human dimension, one that could resist the allure of
a knowledge and practice essentially isolated and protective (for the ana-
lyst) from the disturbances of the encounter with the suffering of the other,




                                                            ly
and instead open up to the need to give a place and a scientific status to the




                                                       on
‘real’, lived and (not thought) relationship confined to the imaginary.
    The vicissitudes, even dramatic ones, are well known in the biographies

                                               e
of psychoanalysts who distanced themselves from orthodoxy and, by bring-
                                            us
ing a different voice, undermined the delicate and crucial operation of sci-
entific validation of a discipline poised between natural and human science.
                                         al

    Tragic ruptures, disavowals, betrayals have marked the history of psy-
                                      ci


choanalysis, demonstrating how the scientific debate and theoretical align-
                                  er



ments triggered such intense and powerful dynamics as to overwhelm not
                              m




only the choices of thinking and belonging, but the very existences of those
involved.
                       om




    In today’s very different horizon, which assimilates the epistemology of
complexity and many relational assumptions and concepts, we can try to
                   -c




integrate the diversity of outlooks in a composite vision, aware that any
              on




cognitive act is, first and foremost, a vehicle for a personal research and
conception of life, of the human being, of relationships and ways of being
           N




in the world, in the relationship with oneself and with what is other than
oneself.
    This premise is useful to remind ourselves that the process of evolution
of ideas and knowledge is structurally connected to the subjectivities and
histories of those who elaborate or adopt those theories, ‘in the tangled web
of individual-group dynamics (...) between individual creativity and collec-
tive value recognition’ (Fox-Keller, 1983, p. 12).
    In short, it is not simply a matter of assuming the relativity of every pos-
sible gaze on reality, but of considering the gaze itself as revealing a vision
of the world and a way of inhabiting the existence of the observer.
    We can therefore extend the ‘theory-method-technique’ sequence and
articulate it by adding the worldview (Weltanshauung) and epistemic foun-
dations which shape ideas, and find their arguments (Minolli, 2015). That is
to say that the way we frame reality and how we know it are not the frame
                       Some thoughts on the subject and relations            111



and background elements to our system of thinking but constitute its very
plot and essence.
    This nexus between life and thought, between existence and conscious-
ness, which we can assume to be present in every discipline, is all the more
stringent when the object of knowledge is the subject of knowledge itself,
its reality, and the theories derived from it cannot be handled as an intellec-
tual heritage divorced from the rest of its existence. All this should remind
us that our models and theories of reference are part of us because they are
traversed by dimensions of value and meaning consistent with who we are
and the way we interpret our profession and the business of living (Gius &
Coin, 1999).




                                                               ly
What we mean by ‘relationship’




                                                        on
    While it is true that today everyone talks about relationships and recog-

                                             e
nises themselves in many of the aspects that relational psychoanalysis has
                                          us
brought to the fore, it is also evident that the concept lends itself to multiple
interpretations and is used in different applications in clinical practice.
                                       al

    In order to define the field, we will not consider the more strictly phenom-
                                  ci


enal and experiential meanings, on which much relational psychoanalysis
                             er



(and also various non-psychodynamic approaches) has dwelt, probably also
                         m




due to an interest that, with the demise of Freudian metapsychology, has been
oriented more towards clinical theory than formal theory.
                  om




    The focus on the experiential plane of the relationship has had the
undoubted merit of dismantling the aseptic image of the analyst but has also
              -c




brought with it the limitation of often stopping at a descriptive rather than
         on




explanatory level of phenomena.
    P.F. Galli commented many years ago that we have moved on from the
     N




hieratic analyst who offers interpretations, to what he has repeatedly called
the ‘analyst in his underwear’, who dispenses affection and acknowledge-
ment, thereby criticising the affective-emotional-experiential emphasis given
to the analytical encounter, to the detriment of other levels of understanding.
    In the same vein, Minolli used to repeat that ‘the relationship does not
cure’, thereby questioning the hypothesis that the therapeutic factor was
linked to the device of a reparative parental relationship or a corrective
emotional experience, to the response to a need for recognition, or to the
experience of reliance, dependence, fine-tuning, empathy. All of these ele-
ments undoubtedly participate in the therapeutic experience, but they can-
not represent the only therapeutic key to an analytical process.
    Rather than taking it for granted, it would be worth questioning what the
relation is on a theoretical-explanatory level and within the logic of analyt-
ical interventions with people.
112                               Romina Coin



    What status do we assign to the relationship and how does it position
itself within a theory of the subject and a theory of the clinic? How does the
relationship with the other affect the psychic life of human beings? What
role and what relevance does the other have in determining the conditions
of life and the well-being of the subject?


Reality exists

    There is no doubt that the relationship raises the question of reality, and
reality refers us to the epistemological question, before the theoretical and
clinical ones, of the relationship between objectivity and subjectivity,
between the observing subject and the datum of his observation.




                                                           ly
    We take as our starting assumption that reality exists in spite of and




                                                      on
beyond ourselves and our possibility of conceiving, signifying and under-
standing it.

                                               e
    Therefore, we assume that reality is not the product of a mental construc-
                                            us
tion and that its complexity remains irreducible and unpredictable, in the
sense that it does not bend because of our need to process it, control it, dom-
                                         al

inate it. There is the reality of ourselves, of what we are, subjects, living
                                     ci


organisms, with a beginning and an end, each with our own origins, with
                                 er



our own life history, with our own uniqueness; just as there is the reality of
                             m




the other who is other than us.
    We might consider the ‘reality’ of the human subject as his biological,
                       om




psychological, social, cultural uniqueness, and probably also the fundamen-
tal anxieties of existence, which derive from the fact that, unlike all other
                   -c




living beings, the human being knows that he has a beginning and an end.
              on




    We happen in the world as an emergence, an expression of interactions
that preceded us. At conception and birth, we find ourselves configured into
           N




the unique identity that defines us and that will forever ground our existence.
For a certain period of time, perhaps until the emergence of the reflexive
capacity, the child is active within the parameters established by the genetic
and environmental heritage that constitute it, by the bios and by the care of
others (the investment): at least until 15/18 months of age (Stern, 1985) the
child has not yet matured the reflexive capacity, which is the necessary
requirement to develop the faculty of creative and propositional expression,
going beyond the primary dependence of the child on the caregiver.
    The subject is defined in the interaction with the caregiver in full coher-
ence and continuity with the parent. This means that there is no assumption
of the existence of an anterior subjective entity or agent, which pre-exists
the facts and then enters into a relationship with the circumstances, events,
the vicissitudes of living. There is no assumption of an original, integral,
authentic self, projected towards a predictable and optimal trajectory, which
                      Some thoughts on the subject and relations           113



events and the vicissitudes of experience then deviate, corrupt, compro-
mise, pollute. For this reason, the hypothesis is challenged according to
which therapeutic efforts should be inspired by the criteria of some normal-
ity, as an endowment to be restored or aimed at so that the patient can recov-
er one of his ‘truths’ or well-being.
    The subject exists and is real, starting with what he is, how he is config-
ured: he does not enter the flow, he is that flow.
    The life process of the human subject, his natural being and becoming,
is the slow proceeding in life by working out the possibility of continually
measuring, confronting and mediating existential solutions that make his
relationship with the inescapable stresses and aspects of reality, of self and
of what is other than self, sustainable.
    Reality exists but we cannot know it except through our own eyes. What




                                                              ly
I grasp is thus reality for me and the other’s reality for me.




                                                       on
    In this perspective, the therapeutic factor no longer consists in promot-
ing some structural transformation or repairing deficiencies and deficits, but

                                            e
in fostering the possibility of an active recognition and appropriation of
                                         us
one’s own reality, because ‘well-being’ does not depend tout court on the
data of reality but on the quality of the relationship the subject establishes
                                      al

with that reality, which is his or her own.
                                 ci


    This may appear to be a trivial and obvious statement, or simplistic and
                            er



reductive; on the contrary, it announces the proposal for a complete over-
                        m




turning of the conventional approach to thinking and clinical reasoning. The
new element is in the attempt to translate the heuristics of complexity into
                 om




a conception of clinical method and practice that coherently integrates its
principles and categories.
              -c




    This involves working towards an idea of human being that does not focus
        on




on the pre-eminence and explanatory centrality of the mental: the view that
the control booth of human experience is in intra- and interpsychic processes
     N




and their ability to process every level of self-experience, has been overcome.
    The proposal to give relative and non-foundational weight to content,
meanings, the symbolic plane and the many concepts on which man’s self-
image is built, with the myth of interiority (Jervis, 2011) and the culture of
introspection (Foucault, 1992), also incorporates the contributions of neu-
roscience and cognitive science, which now identify the processes of con-
sciousness as the area of greatest interest for psychological research.
    It would be impossible to go into such a vast topic here. We will limit
ourselves to its etymological definition: the term consciousness comes from
the Latin consciens, present participle of conscíre, meaning to be aware. It
is the consciousness that the subject has of himself and the external world
with which he is in relationship, of his own identity and, for the human
being, of the complex of his own inner state, with his thoughts, fantasies,
feelings, emotions, sensations, etc.
114                               Romina Coin



    In these terms, consciousness is, in its essence, approachable to the
meaning of computation and cognition of the living, proposed by Maturana
and Varela (1980) and Morin (1986) to denote the capacity proper to every
living form to distinguish the me from the non-me. Living computation is
devoted essentially to the organization of being, to remaining alive and to
its reproduction.
    In this perspective, the axis of attention shifts from the plane of repre-
sentations and mental processes to the factual, empirical, organic plane and
invites us to set the productions of consciousness as subordinate and func-
tional to the overall organization of the living being. A human subject that
does not define itself in a psychic identity but is rooted in its existence from
the bios and its being governed, like any other living form, by self-eco-reg-
ulatory processes.




                                                            ly
    Each part, function or aspect of the living being moves in concert with




                                                       on
the other parts for the essential purpose of maintaining its unity and coher-
ence, that is, the conditions necessary for its subsistence (Sander, 2007).

                                               e
    The understanding of the human being is thus reversed from cogito ergo
                                            us
sum to sum ergo cogito, because human existence includes the secondary
functions of thought, reflexivity, mentalization; but these ‘higher’ faculties
                                         al

are but a relative component, in equilibrium with the many others that con-
                                      ci


stitute it as a unitary system and which, together, operate for the purpose of
                                  er



the preservation of one’s life.
                              m




    This equilibrium is inherently fine-tuned also in its ecological dimen-
sion, to everything other than itself, seamlessly, thus overcoming any resid-
                       om




ual traces of an inside-outside, I-other dichotomy. The ecological vision
grasps the simultaneity of ‘internal’ and ‘external’, subject-environment
                   -c




events, and the necessitating and inescapable link uniting them.
              on




    The relationship with the other, then, is not something the subject enters
into or a context within which he is placed: the subject, and his connection
           N




with the other than itself, are the same thing, the two sides of the same coin.
The subject does not ‘have’ but ‘is’ its connections with the world.


The relationship as interaction

    Once we have taken into consideration the aspect of reality, of the reality
that exists according to its own principles and logic, we need to outline the
aspect of subjectivity, in other words the eyes of the beholder.
    If the impossibility of neutrality, i.e. of knowledge reflecting some
objective truth, can now be taken for granted, when the facts are put to the
test, abandoning all support for some sort of objectivity leaves one disori-
ented and disenfranchised. When, for example, we have an idea of the
patient, of his history, of the course of his relationship with us, we tend to
                       Some thoughts on the subject and relations           115



resort to definitions which, in traditional clinical reasoning, objectify him.
And the same happens outside the professional settings, when in everyday
life we enter into relationships.
    When we consider, in theoretical terms or in the flow of our existence,
the relationship between two or more subjects, we inevitably run into a
dilemma: what is the ‘objective’ contribution of each to the generation of
the phenomena occurring in the interpersonal field, ‘between’ the inter-
preters of that relationship?
    At best, the epistemic assumption of subjective implication shows itself
where and when one wonders whether the situations experienced depend on
oneself, on how one is made, on how one has acted, or whether they depend
on something external to oneself: on the other, on one’s parents, one’s part-
ner, the government, a traumatic event, and so on. ‘Subjective’ is that which




                                                               ly
affects me, where I have something to do with it, while ‘objective’ is that




                                                        on
which is beyond me, which I come across, which happens beyond me.
    A great deal of psychological literature uses descriptive categories such

                                             e
as functional/ dysfunctional, match/mismatch, adaptive/maladaptive, in an
                                          us
explanatory manner. These are categories which, in addition to implicitly
referring to some optimal criterion, of adequacy, health, validity, of the rela-
                                       al

tionship (functional, adaptive, ‘fit’), assume the dimension ‘between’ the
                                  ci


subject and reality (the other) as the co-constructed product, the ‘third’ ele-
                             er



ment resulting from that encounter.
                        m




    This objectification of the ‘between’ seems to enshrine as inescapable a
position of dependence (albeit reciprocal) of the subject on the other, open-
                  om




ing up to a more topical and refined reinterpretation of the decisive weight
that the other would have on the subject.
              -c




    The recurring problem - which, as mentioned, is the same one that runs
         on




through the processes of naive psychology - is to establish which contribu-
tion comes from the one, which from the other. The ‘between’ would thus
     N




be the outcome of the more or less happy convergence between the two,
where that ‘between’ is understood as the place of the confluence of the
worlds of the subjects and the area of the bargaining, mediation and nego-
tiation between the poles of the relationship.
    How can we get out of this scheme which, beneath the surface, continues
to refer to (and get stuck in) the I-you, subject-other, inside-outside dichoto-
my? And above all, how to get out of it without losing the subject, and the
radicality of its real being, in the complexity of the relationship?
    Incidentally, this is a junction one always encounters in the process of
patients in analysis: when projection and delegation are faced with a crisis
(‘my suffering depends on something external to me’) in order to open up
and consider one’s own participation in events, experiences of guilt, unwor-
thiness, inadequacy (‘then it is my fault’, ‘I am wrong’) inexorably arise
which, while reflecting on the one hand the difficulty, also cultural, of con-
116                               Romina Coin



ceiving responsibility in a non-duty or judgmental key, on the other hand
they cover the personal fatigue of taking on one’s own responsibility in the
first person.
    An interesting avenue to explore in attempting to unravel this I-you
back-and-forth is to keep in mind how the concept of relationship itself is
used, because it is this use that delineates the context of meaning within
which the encounter takes place (or is analysed). The concept of the rela-
tionship is a construct, a representation that informs, precedes and follows
interaction: the relationship is an idea we have in our heads, it is a content
(and a reference model) which, as such, is functional to the maintenance of
the overall existential equilibrium; in other words, thinking about the rela-
tionship in a certain way serves to affirm and find self-affirmation.
    Things may then appear differently when we dwell on the most tangible




                                                            ly
aspect, which is interaction, that is, the fact of the exchange that takes place




                                                       on
continuously, reciprocally and simultaneously between subjects. One can-
not but interact, and interaction takes place at all levels of experience,

                                               e
somatic, sensory, perceptual, emotional, affective, etc., of the self and the
                                            us
self with the other.
    Interaction as an observable phenomenon, which highlights the self-eco-
                                         al

organising logic of subjects (the subject is its connections). Interaction as a
                                      ci


reciprocal, recursive incidence between living beings that act, come into
                                  er



being (self-eco-organise) through that interaction.
                              m




    In this reciprocal incidence, the impact of one on the other is always com-
mensurate, modulated by the self-regulation of each: each transposes and
                       om




integrates what the other expresses, insofar as the contribution of the other is
sustainable, functional and consistent with one’s own self-affirmation.
                   -c




    Interaction can then be thought of as a dance that expresses one hundred
              on




per cent of what each one is, in congruence with what the other is.
    No external stimulus can have an instructive value per se on the subject;
           N




nothing and no one that is external to the subject can condition or influence
it except to the extent that the subject assimilates and remodels that stimulus
as a function of itself. Just as nothing the subject expresses can be under-
stood as a mere reaction to the external stimulus because the response is
always, inevitably, the outcome of a process of appropriation commensurate
with the subject’s self-organisation.
    This dance is well illustrated by the ‘specificity mechanism’ enunciated
by biologist Paul Weiss (1947) and taken up by L. Sander in his analysis of
dyadic adult-child micro-interactions.
    The author reports on the observation of what happens between a father
and the eight-day-old baby girl who falls asleep in his arms (2005, 273-
274): each movement of each one of them is calibrated to the gesture of the
other, in a circularity that is highlighted in the slowed-down reproduction of
the sequence of frames.
                       Some thoughts on the subject and relations           117



    The observation of this type of dyadic interaction is particularly interest-
ing because it has the advantage of emphasising the simplest, most imme-
diate, corporeal components of a communication that still travels entirely on
implicit, biological, instinctive channels.
    If then, in an interaction, nothing that is implemented by one is foreign
to the other, for as long as that dance takes place, we might ask ourselves
what it is that generates and drives this convergence? Why do two or more
subjects establish an interaction and what is it that allows this interaction to
stabilise and continue for a long time?
    We can trace this agreement on convergence back to the need the living
being has to actualize itself, and in its actualization it necessarily contem-
plates its connection with the other than itself. Minolli (2016) proposed
framing this ‘motive’ in terms of an ‘investment’, understood in its most




                                                               ly
basic and valid meaning for every form of life: as a vector necessary for sur-




                                                        on
vival, which drives the living being to actualize itself by relating, and to
relate by acting out itself for what it is.

                                             e
    Therefore, interacting concretely expresses and accounts for ‘that’ sub-
                                          us
ject in its wholeness and in the processuality of its becoming.
    Assuming the subject as the apex of the analysis, we can read relation-
                                       al

al phenomena in the light of the self-eco-organisation of each one, which,
                                  ci


in that peculiar interaction, finds incessantly, dynamically (in the sense
                             er



of non-static but constantly moving) its equilibrium, the optimal habitat
                        m




for self-affirmation, which for that living being - and this should be
stressed - coincides with preserving the conditions indispensable to its
                  om




subsistence.
    Any type of interaction, and therefore any interpersonal relationship,
              -c




takes place under optimal conditions of security for each one involved, in a
         on




dance that, to the eye of the observer, may appear incomprehensible, patho-
logical, incongruent, maladaptive, but from the point of view of vital organ-
     N




isation restores to the subjects a sense of self that coincides with the feeling
of their existence.


In conclusion

   Adopting this perspective on the subject and his relationships imposes a
choice of field that is diriment with respect to how we conceive the human
being, the unfolding of his existence, the origin of suffering and the hori-
zons of psychological care.
   The basic question that is raised is whether the relational life of the sub-
ject should be framed as an innate and structural predisposition to depend-
ence on the other, or whether the very hypothesis of this dependence should
instead be considered an expression of a reading of reality; a reading that is
118                                Romina Coin



functional to an (individual, cultural, social) way of conceiving oneself and
one’s being in the world.
    Human life, like that of every living form, would be impossible outside
its relationality, but does this really imply that the human being remains -
throughout his life - necessarily dependent on the other and conditioned by
its recognition?
    We are born into a naturally asymmetrical relationship, where the child
is dependent on the adult and builds his or her self-image and feeling of self
and the world based on the experience he or she has of himself or herself in
the relationship with his or her caregivers.
    We are thus constituted by the relationship as children and, for a long time
in life, this position corresponds to the feeling of our existence. This entails
experiencing ourselves in a relationship with reality where we perforce main-




                                                              ly
tain a subordinate, passive position, in need of completion from the other.




                                                        on
    If we assume that this position of dependence continues throughout life,
we will understand suffering as the effect of a lack of conformity between

                                                e
the subject’s demands and reality: the relationship is the source of suffering.
                                             us
Consequently, its solution will have to come through a change in the struc-
tural conditions, either with a change in the subject, or with a change in the
                                          al

other, or with a change in the relationship between the two.
                                       ci


    This is the most widespread idea in common thinking, and it is also the
                                  er



leading hypothesis of a conception of care understood as repair or compen-
                              m




sation, which aims at modifying the internal or external conditions of the
subject in the direction of favouring better adaptation and congruence
                        om




between the self and reality.
    In this perspective, the reference to a normative (cultural, statistical) cri-
                    -c




terion is kept fixed in the background, indicating the modes and forms of
              on




being and realisation best suited to ensuring an optimal relationship
between subject and reality, between the subject and the other.
           N




    In light of what has been said so far, another way is possible. We can
indeed question the assumption of dependence as an inescapable datum of
the human condition and affirm that theorising an ontological dependence
on the other and its recognition is functional to maintaining ourselves in a
reassuring and confirming position, because it demotes to the other, to the
objectivity of things, the power to define ourselves, deferring the time for a
pronouncement and an assumption of the self in the first person.
    Dependency could then be considered not as a structural component of
the relationship, but as one of the possible readings in the interpretation of
the reality of the relationship. With this change of perspective, the focus
shifts from the observed reality to the eyes of the observer.
    This means not stopping at the level of experience but going back to the
existential logic that underlies it and integrates it into the subject’s overall
organisation.
                             Some thoughts on the subject and relations                         119



    From this point of view, suffering does not arise from the relationship, with
the frustrations, shortcomings and limitations that the latter always brings with
it, but ultimately derives from the difficulty of abandoning the original posi-
tion, of the ‘child’, in order to open up to the discovery of a relationship with
oneself and with reality no longer centred on an external referent.
    By identifying this functionality as a criterion for understanding rela-
tionships, and not some ideal model of relationship one should strive
towards, the aim of care can then consist in taking in hand this displacement
of self in the other, to this delegation of self to reality, in order to promote
in the subject the possibility of self-recognition as he is configured and to
see in his suffering the laborious elaboration of his life process, which is the
elaboration of his relationship with life.
    Care can be oriented towards this return to oneself (not reflexive but as




                                                                     ly
appropriation, recognition and acceptance of what one is) which was at the




                                                               on
time considered ‘self-awareness’ (Minolli & Tricoli, 2004) and which, over
time, has been specified as the quality of presence to oneself, which is the

                                                   e
prelude to every possible appropriation and pronouncement of the creative
                                                us
self in one’s living.
    Perhaps, then, it becomes possible to interrupt the short-circuit of the
                                             al

‘between’, with its perpetual back-and-forth of claims and delegations, and
                                         ci


to clear the space of the experience of self, and of the self with the other,
                                    er



from a fatal, reciprocal condemnation to having to be the response to the
                               m




other’s need for confirmation.
                       om




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Received for publication: 17 July 2022.
Accepted for publication: 20 September 2022.

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Ricerca Psicoanalitica 2022; XXXIII(s1):713
doi:10.4081/rp.2022.713

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