The mutually constitutive relationship between subjectivity and intersubjectivity and the responsible subject

Abstract

At the centre of subjectivity lies the interdependence between passion and sense of responsibility. Passion is nourished by misacknowledgment (possessive desire) and acknowledgment (hatred) of the other as a subject at the same time. In the crescendo of this contradiction, the subject discovers that he is the hated subjectivity of the object that makes him alive and desirable. He discovers that he loves the object for the same reason he hates it. He must protect the object of his passionate love if he wants to keep this love alive, and this is when the sense of responsibility for the others is born. The passage from passion (passionate subject) to responsibility (responsible subject) is neither automatic nor direct. The child has to gasp his mother's subjectivity in order to responsibly protect it. What makes this possible is hysterical identification, which is both identification and relation, with her. Hysterical identification allows the child to extend the boundaries of his existence in order to make it eccentric to the original, undifferentiated core of his own subjectivity. The other becomes co-constitutive of the subjectivity, and the particular of the subjective experience meets the universal of the intersubjectivity at the point where they constitute each other.

Keywords:

• subjectivity
• intersubjectivity
• imitation
• hysterical identification
• responsibility

Notes

¹In these very primitive phases, the form and substance (content) of the meeting coincide. The “drawing” produced by the movements that the mother and the child make to stay tuned with each other is crucial for the fulfilment of a true self.

²This confidence also guarantees the narcissistic cohesion of the subject.

³We do not really decide what we do if we have not decided what relationship with the collectivity our doings put us in.