Analytic positions that do not make the ego/subject distinction are confined to a dyadic conception of the analytic relationship. Granted, within a dyadic conceptualisation, there is certainly space for, and often an emphasis on, interpersonal dialogue, egalitarianism, notions of authenticity and spontaneity, and the dyadic creation, location and focus of knowledge. However, Greenberg, and others, raise concerns about the neglect of the intrapersonal, relationships external to the dyad, the ineffable mystery of the individual other (Frosh, 2006), and the alienating and disruptive power of the unconscious.
Making this distinction between the ego/person/self as opposed to the subject allows analytic work to be conceptualised as a three-subjectivity process in which two divided subjects relate to each other through two objects via a third subject – namely, the language of the unconscious that both parties are subjected to in a manner unknown to both of them. The analyst orients the process towards thirdness by functioning as the carrier, observer, and conveyor of the unconscious processes holding both participants in place. This is the analyst as representative and reminder of thirdness, the symbolic, Otherness and the unconscious. Rather than being seen as personal dialogue, discourse is regarded as the use of a pre-existing symbolic structure through which these seemingly congruent desires have already been culturally, socially, and unconsciously mediated. Thus, language inhabits a whole set of differentiating structures and histories that constitute the individual in its very being. Lacan comments in an early seminar that no
two-body psychology exists without the intervention of a third element. If, as we must, take speech as the central feature of our perspective, then it is within a three – rather than two-term relation that we have to formulate the analytic experience in its totality (1991 [1975]: 11).
Muller (2007) provides a review of the concept of thirdness, differentiating between developmental thirdness, relational thirdness and structural thirdness. The developmental third represents the installation of triangulation or triangular space in mental life, so as to allow for more complex thinking, meaning making and structure. The analyst’s reflexive self-awareness and positioning of knowledge within discourse creates a third point within the dyad. This level of thinking represents a developmental achievement for the patient. The developmental third is a requirement for the analyst and is grounded by the analyst’s analytic knowledge (S2 in the place of Truth, as discussed below).
In regard to relational thirdness, the relational school has engaged with the concept of thirdness (Gerson [2004], Benjamin [2004], Aron [2006] and Ogden [1994, 1999, 2004]) and, as to be expected, emphasises the third as the intersubjective field created by the dyad, in which analytic material can emerge and progress. At the same time, there is some passing reference to the dyad requiring that intersubjective third to provide a pre-existing grounding to the dyad. This paradox remains (See Mills [2012: 16])—Muller suggests some of that inconsistency
can be resolved if we view the relational third as the history of the transference/countertransference responses in the intersubjective field, a history that becomes established in an intelligible and usable manner because it follows the semiotic rules of discourse – that is, because it is held by the structural Third and can then function as a representative of the Third (231).