Taking It Personally

Abstract

The author reviews some of her personal and intellectual connections and experience in dialogue with Philip Bromberg, touching on a few ideas that have central importance for her as well as how he conveyed his own experience and feeling of what was important. She highlights how Bromberg influenced her and summarizes the way she understands her differences with him.

Keywords:

• dissociation
• intersubjectivity
• recognition
• affect regulation
• collision and negotiation

Notes

1 “What Just Happened? William Alanson White Conference (2021). See Petrucelli (this issue).

2 Some of these remarks are quotations from previous discussion of Philip Bromberg’s work in a review of his second book and an invited discussion (Benjamin, 2013) in the context of a long interview he gave to Contemporary Psychoanalysis (Greif & Livingston, 2013)

3 See Footnote 1.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jessica Benjamin

Jessica Benjamin, Ph.D. is the author of The Bonds of Love (1988) and the seminal article, “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). Additionally, she is the author of Like Subjects, Love Objects (1995); and Shadow of the Other (1998). She is a supervisor and faculty member of the New York University Postdoctoral program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis and at the Stephen Mitchell Relational Studies Center where she is a founder and board member.