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Benjamin’s work relies on the presumption and argues for the proposition that recognition is possible and that it is the condition under which the human subject achieves psychic self-understanding and acceptance.There are several passages in almost any text of hers that gives one a sense of what recognition is about. It is not the simple presentation of a subject for another that facilitates the recognition of that self-presenting subject by the Other.

“Central to her philosophical inheritance is the notion of recognition itself, a key concept that was developed in Hegel’s (1807) Phenomenology of Spirit and that has assumed new meanings in the work of Jürgen Habermas (1981) and Axel Honneth (1995) in recent years. In some ways, Benjamin’s work relies on the presumption and argues for the proposition that recognition is possible and that it is the condition under which the human subject achieves psychic self-understanding and acceptance”“a sense of what recognition is about.

272 - “One of the distinctive contributions of her theory is to insist that intersubjectivity is not the same as object relations, that intersubjectivity adds to object relations the idea of an external Other, one who exceeds the psychic construction of the object in complementary terms. This means that whatever the psychic and fantasmatic relation to the object may be, it ought to be understood in terms of the larger dynamic of recognition.

"In some ways, Benjamin's work relies on the presumption and argues for the proposition that recognition is possible and that it is the condition under which the human subject achieves psychic self-understanding and acceptance" (272)"a process that is engaged when subject and Other understand themselves to be reflected in one another, but where this reflection does not result in a collapse of the one into the Other (through an incorporative identification, for instance) or a projection that annihilates the alterity of the Other.

Why ambivalence and not "happiness"?“This way [Benjamin's third where negation can produce joy] of approaching the triadic relation is a happy one, but I confess that I am not sure it is finally credible or, indeed, desirable. It is indisputably impressive, though, as an act of faith in relationships and, specifically, in the therapeutic relationship itself. But as an act of faith, it is difficult to “argue” against.

"For if it is the case that destructiveness can turn into recognition, then it follows that recognition can leave destructiveness behind. Is this true? Further, is the dyadic relationship assumed by recognition, given the qualification that the process of recognition now constitutes “the third,” itself based on a disavowal of other forms of triangulation? And is there a way to think of triangulation apart from oedipalization?