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Cont Philos Rev (2012) 45:447–459
DOI 10.1007/s11007-012-9223-z

Empathy and second-person methodology

Natalie Depraz

Published online: 25 August 2012

Ó Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2012

Abstract How the phenomenology of empathy in Husserl and beyond and the
second-person approach of cognition are able to mutually enrich and constrain each
other? Whereas the intersubjective empathy is limited to face-to-face inter-indi-
vidual relational experiences or, when socially embedded, results a non-individu-
alized understanding of others in general, the second person approach of cognition
opens the way for a plural relational yet individualized understanding of the other. I
would like to show in this paper how the integration of both phenomenological and
cognitive fields paves the way for the more encompassing description of intersub-
jective experience as a ‘‘relational multiplicity,’’ which I will ultimately describe
through the empirical practice of an emergency psychiatric unit.

Keywords Phenomenology
Husserl
Empathy
The other
Intersubjectivity

1 Introduction

In this paper my aim is to show how the phenomenology of empathy in Husserl and
beyond on the one side and the second-person approach of cognition on the other
side are able to mutually enrich and constrain each other. In that respect, my
contention is the following: whereas the intersubjective empathy is limited to face-
to-face inter-individual relational experiences or, when socially embedded, results a
non-individualized understanding of others in general, the second person approach
of cognition opens the way for a plural relational yet individualized understanding
of the others. Thus the phenomenology of empathy may be both nourished and
limited by such a cognitive approach; conversely, the latter suggests a clear-cut

N. Depraz (&)
Research Center for Applied Epistemology (Paris), University of Rouen (E.R.I.A.C.)
Husserl-Archives (ENS, Paris), Rouen, France
e-mail: natalie.depraz@univ-rouen.fr

123
448 N. Depraz

structural approach to intersubjectivity, namely thanks to the inferential access to

the inner states (beliefs, desires, emotions) of the other within the framework of the
theory of mind, but it lacks the description of the inner lived character of the other-
consciousness proper to the phenomenological experience. As a result, phenom-
enology provides an experiential clue to the cognition of others and helps including
lived components such as sensory, remembering, imaginative and affective
experiences.
In this contribution I will make the following steps: first, I will delineate the
various accesses to intersubjectivity in Husserl, then I will identify the relevance of
the second-person approach in the cognitive sciences and, more specifically, in the
Depraz/Varela/Vermersch approach; third, I will show how the Husserlian theory of
empathy can be put into practice in a very concrete way; my next step will then
consist in exploring the possible access to the other within the science of
consciousness while studying the complementarity between the focal method of
empathy and the more global and ecological method of openness; finally, I will
show how the integration of both phenomenological and cognitive fields paves the
way for the more encompassing description of intersubjective experience as a
relational multiplicity, which I will ultimately describe through the empirical
practice of an emergency psychiatric unit.

2 Three main theoretical approaches to intersubjectivity in Husserl

Since the important interpretative work that was achieved about intersubjectivity
from the sixties onward in Germany (Schütz, Waldenfels, Theunissen, Held, Brand,
Yamaguchi, Römpp) and more recently (Depraz, Steinbock, Zahavi), it is well-
known that there are different methodological and ontological accesses to
intersubjectivity in Husserl: whereas the Cartesian way stresses the analogization
process of my embodied experience of the other with my own embodied self-
experience and gives way to a primacy of empathy re-understood as a (static)
mediate and gnoseological still lived experience of the other, the way through the
life-world opens the way for the more global experience of otherness and the others
in general through the social (generative) embeddeness of the embodied horizon-
tality of the world. Beyond this first crucial distinctive opposition the psychological
way suggests still another quite original understanding of intersubjectivity: it
underlines the reality of the (genetic) egoic inner scission of subjectivity at work in
the exemplary processes of remembering (past I/present I) imagining (figured
I/effective I) and reflection (reflected/reflecting I) and sees in them multifarious
forms of a unique self-alterity dynamics which builds the experiential condition of
the reality of the alterity of the other.1
From these different approaches one can draw specific non-Husserlian issues:
first, the other is in itself an ethical issue, given its irreducible enigma for me:
although it is analogous with me, it remains a part of foreignness in the other that
calls for esteem, respect and responsibility; second, the other reveals a key-problem

1
Depraz (1995); Kern (1962).

123
Empathy and second-person methodology 449

for social sciences, insofar as it appears as an individual within an inter-individual

connexion but resists the generic treatment applied to others in general in a
collectivity, be it social or political, or both; third, the other is a question for myself
as a subject and reveals an inner process of individuation proper to each self as such,
the characteristics of which being its intrinsic self-alteration, that is, in experiential
terms, a form of radical passivity towards myself and the other.2

3 A first sketch of the second-person method as a mixed double-face approach

When speaking of second person it is usual to have in mind the general background
proper to the cognitive sciences, which puts to the fore the complex relationships
between first and third person approaches. Within such a methodological and
epistemological context, the risk is to make of the second person yet another person,
other than the first or the third, the latter corresponding respectively to the inner lived
quality of my self-access and reference to myself and the former to the objectified
observation of the behaviour of a person: from outside. The illusion therein lies in
sticking to the grammatical level of understanding of the approaches, as if ‘‘first,’’
‘‘second’’ and ‘‘third’’ were to correspond to the linguistic person pronouns ‘‘I,’’ ‘‘you’’
and ‘‘he/she.’’ Of course, it is not the case. My contention aims at understanding the
second person approach as a relational dynamics which cannot be isolated from the first-
and third-approaches but unavoidably gets nourished by both.
In this respect, I rely on a first sketch related to this issue, which is to be found in
On Becoming Aware,3 where these three approaches are presented as different steps
within a whole unitary process of validation. Each approach is specific and refers to
a singular way as such; each delineates a subjective attitude within the whole social
network. None of them are isolable one from another: whereas the first person
approach is ladden with immediacy and with a search for individual expressivity,
the third one deals with the social non-personal embeddedness of know-hows; as for
the second-person approach, it is dealt with under two main complementary
presentations: (1) empathy understood as a strong emotional resonance with the
other, in link with concrete exemplifications through the key-figures of the coach
and the nurse; (2) heterophenomenology as a participative yet external distant
observation, the key-figure being in this context the anthropologist, who never
becomes member of the tribe in order not to trespass his own methodological laws
of critical distance. Whereas the empathetic resonance amounts to a second-person
approach narrowly permeating the immediacy of the first one, the heterophenom-
enological distant observation corresponds to a second-person opened toward the
third objectified one.4
Furthermore, on the basis of this first inner distinction within the second person
approach it is possible to extend and refine the notion of a second-person approach
while stressing social, ethical, political and pathological components of such a
2
Husserl (1973); Ricœur (1990); Depraz (1995).
3
Depraz, Varela, Vermersch (2003, p. 85).
4
Depraz, Varela, Vermersch (2003, p. 84).

123
450 N. Depraz

relational dynamics.5 I cannot go into too many details within the limited space of
the present contribution, but still, I can mention here a few concrete situations in
order to illustrate and give some preliminary indications about such a second-
personal refined variation: social workers building together a street and building a
provisionary partnership (Gurwitsch), music-lovers sharing music together and
creating a transient but strongly affective community (Schütz), people listening as
an audience to the strong emotional talk of a leader, who generates an immédiate
sympathy close to compassion or even to a fusional contagion (Gefühlsansteckung)
(Scheler), taking part in a meeting and providing constructive arguments for the
benefit of a collective project (Schütz), participating in a demonstration and feeling
the strong resonance of the aspirations and desires of the others in a crowd
(Scheler). In all these situations, we have to do with a relational dynamics which
combines (each time specifically) plurality and individualization, with a strong
affective component which is nearly absent from Husserl’s gnoseological approach
to intersubjective empathy. All the same, such situations provide a medium space
which helps questioning the relevance of both (abstract) extremes remanently at
work in first- and third-person approaches, that is, loneliness and anonymity.

4 Putting Husserl’s intersubjectivity in practice: four pragmatical steps

of the empathetic experience

Let me come back now as a third step to Husserl’s analysis of intersubjectivity while
focusing on its first theoretical approach, that is, empathical intersubjectivity. The
idea is to detail and deepen such an experience in order to unfold its inner
pragmatics as an effect-ladden reality and to check to what extent it can
communicate with some requisits of the second-person approach defined above.
In this respect, Husserl provides us with rich enough indications about the real
praxis of empathy. Along these lines we can distinguish four different and
complementary experiential steps of empathy: 1. A passive association of my lived
body with your lived body; 2. An imaginative self-transposal in your psychic states;
3. An interpretative understanding of yourself as being an alien to me; 4. An ethical
responsabiity toward yourself as a person (enjoying and suffering).6
Actually, Paarung is the husserlian name of the first step: it corresponds to a
sensory and kinesthetic coupling of our lived bodily style of appearing to each other.
Paarung is not as such a perceptive cognitive interaction but a passive receptive
mutual appearing of my bodily move toward the other bodily move and vice versa,
itself grounded upon the fact of the structural similarity of our bodily experiential
dynamics as living (here human) subjects.
The second experiential pragmatic step of empathy is directly based on the
immediate passive resonance of our body-styles: it invites myself and the other to
mutually spontaneously transpose ourselves imaginatively into the each other. You are
saddened by a tragic event, you are happy with looking at kids playing, you are worried

5
Depraz and Cosmelli (2003).
6
Depraz (2001).

123
Empathy and second-person methodology 451

by the illness of your mother and I immediately feel that you are sad, happy and
worried, even if I am not able to know what is the concrete experiential content of your
feelings. Nonetheless I am spontaneously able to imaginatively transpose into
structural similar self-experiences of sadness, happiness or worry and to welcome and
accompany your own feelings. Imaginative self-transposal (‘‘Hineinphantasieren’’ in
Husserl’s words) is the willful cooperative encounter of our bodily psychic dynamics.7
The third step of the lived pragmatical empathetical process deals with understanding
and interpreting, that is, conversely, mis-understanding and hermeneutic failures of the
communication and involves the multifarious facets of expression, be they linguistic-
verbal or bodily-gestual; as for the fourth step, it grafts on the third one an ethical and
emotional component which is experientially intrinsically co-operating with it:
suffering and rejoicing with the other is permeated with my felt sense of both
responsibility and respect toward the other as a person and conversely.
Obviously these four steps are not chronological but occur together within the
holistic empathetical experience As such they provide various clues for a finer
understanding of the segment of the second-person approach that I identified above
as empathetic resonance, as opposed to heterophenomenological observation.

5 Empathy and openness at the heart of the science of consciousness

I would like to explore now the possible access to the other within the science of
consciousness while studying the complementarity between the focal method of
empathy and the more global and ecological method of openness.8 While doing so I
mean to rely on the empathetic resonance as a second person approach oriented
toward the first person one and nourished by the lived praxis of empathy in its four
dynamics (passive coupling, imaginative self-transposal, interpretative communi-
cation and emotional ethic stance), and provide a complementary side of practical
intersubjectivity as openness. My contention here is the following: openness as a
global experience of the other as worldly-embbeded enables to deal with a second-
person approach oriented toward the third-person one, that is, a potential inter-
objectivity without going into the heterophenomenological stance, which is counter-
productive as far as a lived experiential intersubjectivity is concerned.
In short: openness vs. heterophenomenology provides a good candidate for a
genuine lived experiential access to intersubjectivity complementary to the
empathetical experience without any concession to any objectifying reductionist
stance. What do I mean by openness? In order to define it more precisely, I will refer
to Goldstein’s holistic approach of phenomena.9 It provides concrete epistemolog-
ical clues to incorporate a genuine second-person attitude toward every event (and
not only toward the other as person like in the focal method of lived empathy as
shown above). Goldstein furnishes the reader with three main procedural rules,
which are so many practical key-indications of how to face any concrete situation:
7
Spiegelberg (1995).
8
Depraz and Cosmelli (2003: p. 191).
9
Goldstein (1995: pp. 37–40).

123
452 N. Depraz

first, consider any phenomena presented by the organism giving any preference, in
the description, to any special one. It literally means being open to any aspect of
every phenomena, welcoming every perturbation as it is; second, welcoming every
feature of the description of a given event without avoiding the ones which seems
not to provide meaning or to create failures, that is, generously crediting every one
with a potential interest; third, developing a special experiential and descriptive
attention to what surrounds a given phenomenon, that is, to its situation, in order to
open it up into it and provide it with its genuine volumetry. As such, these three
rules amount to the same: they all converge in favoring an open attitude toward
what is possibly emerging.
In such a context, the second person approach results intrinsically double-faced:
(1) it is situated beneath the polar distinction between first and third person
approaches; (2) it is innerly differentiated; (3) it reverberates upon the experiential
meaning of both first and third person approaches.
The schema below shows at best the three mentioned features of our second
person approach:

There appears in the above schema multifarious differentiations within the

second person approach itself. Some concern the second person itself, which
diffracts into a multiplicity of experientiel facets, themselves guided by an initial

123
Empathy and second-person methodology 453

polarity: You-interpersonal relationships vs. We-pluripersonal relationships, which

is either emotional (in its turn ethical or gnoseological) or cognitive (in its turn
social or political), and gives way to multifarious figures: coaches, spiritual friends,
teachers, scientific researchers, collective coaching, co-researchers etc. Some other
differentiations correspond to the various ways through which the multiple second
persons affect the first- and the third-person themselves and innerly transform them.
It gives way a minima (as it appears in the above scheme) to an each time two-fold
first- and third-person, either proper or altered, the latter being precisely altered by
the proximity of the facet of the second person that is the closest either from the
first-one through generative self-alterations of myself or from the third-one via the
participative observer.

6 Second persons: the relational multiplicity in the light of the practical

neurophenomenology of the second person

It is well-known that a disciplined method of gathering first-person data is necessary

in order to study consciousness in a scientific way.10 Beyond any isomorphism,
which merely correlates experiential subjective accounts and their neural counter-
parts, Francisco Varela’s neurophenomenological research program11 puts to the
fore the contention according to which both analyses (neuro-dynamic and
phenomenological) are generated through each other: they give way to new
neuronal data and to other aspects of the subjective phenomenon on the one side,
they reciprocally produce dynamic categories and renewed experiential concepts on
the other side.12
While relying on such a first co-generative step, I wish to show here that the
third-person protocols are not neutral, that is, independent from the intersubjective
situation of each subject in its own individuated space–time.13 Taking into account
reports is required: not only first-person but also second-person reports. We
therefore suggest to take seriously the multifarious types of commitments of the
second-person activities all along the whole process of experiential validation. For
example, in the framework of a scientific experiment which uses the neurophe-
nomenological method, the different subjects who are experimenting and are
descriptively accounting for their experience are co-researchers from the start: they
actively contribute to the production and to the description of the experiment and of
the experience, the former being then precisely correlated to the neuronal third-
person account; another kind of involvement of the second-person approach is at
work as I mentioned it above in the activity of the research supervisor, who takes
part (as a coach) in the ongoing research of the student; the authors of the referential
texts for the research finally, by interacting with the experiment, play the part of

10
Varela, Shear (1999); Petitmengin (2009).
11
Varela (1996).
12
Varela and Depraz (2000); Varela and Depraz (2003).
13
Bitbol (2002).

123
454 N. Depraz

first-hand reflecting actors for the researcher, namely of so many (each time
different) second persons.
A first step was already walked in this direction as I already mentioned14: I
contended the plastic continuity of the three approaches (first-, second- and third-
person) rather than their polar opposition, thus paving the way for a gradual
dynamic of intersubjective validations. Here the second person is not a formal
instance, but a relational dynamic of different figures in mutual interaction. I
therefore question the methodological framework of the so-called hard problem as it
was first stated.15 Starting from the irreducible distinction between a third-person
(experimental and quantified) and a first-person (experiential and qualitative)
methodology and then trying to fill in the gap leads actually nowhere.
If the second person is less another pole than a continuous and plastic texture of
exchanges, it results problematic to carry on calling such a relational dynamic a
second person, as if (1) we had to do thereby with a separated and isolated entity (a
particular individual), and (2) such a distinct entity was secondary with regard to
another one (which would have the primacy): I therefore chose to speak of seconds
persons in the plural. As a result, I are also led to question in turn the polar
component of the so-called first- and third-persons. While putting to the fore a
renewed understanding of the second-person methodology, which does not lie in the
formal primacy given to a You as opposed to an I and to an He/She, we bring forth a
plurality of methods as intersubjective practices. In that respect, the Husserlian
empathy results a key-concept of such a methodology. More than a mere central
condition of possibility of the science of consciousness, empathy corresponds to an
actual practice which articulates from within the scientific research. In the same way
as the Husserlian concept of Einfühlung requires to be adapted to the practical
experimental framework, the latter also results enlightenend by the phenomeno-
logical intersubjective method.16
On the basis of such a critics of the solipsist and/or theoretical approach, one may
immediately have in mind the potential ethical component of the experience: it may
seem to give way to a series of attitudes related to a kind of care for the other. Be it
M. Buber and its understanding of the You, E. Stein, who stresses the person as a
unity of body, soul and spirit, E. Levinas with his unconditional openness to the
Other, or again G. Marcel’s approach of the person as mystery, all these approaches
insist on the primacy of the other understood as an individual singularity. The
question is then: is the very relationship with such an other put to the fore, or is it
merely the other as a singular individual that is put to the fore? How can we
understand the empathetic relationship while starting only from the singularity of
the other person? As a matter of fact, such forms of personal ethics remain
individualist insofar as no relationship is thematized as such but only the
relationship between one individual person and one other individual person: never
do you experience the relational linkage proper if you are only primarily interested
in the individual persons themselves, be they understood as subject (ipse-identity) or
14
Depraz, Varela, Vermersch (2003/2011).
15
Levine (1983); Chalmers (1995).
16
Depraz and Cosmelli (2003).

123
Empathy and second-person methodology 455

as object (idem-identity), according to P. Ricœur’s distinction in Soi-meˆme comme

un autre.
In contrast, if the relational experience is defined as a circular dynamic where the
persons are mutually coupled without any primacy given to the one or to the other,
circularity appears as a relational mutuality, where experiences are given as
symmetric or reciprocal, and it does justice to multifarious experiential contexts. In
that respect, the person as a singular instance is put to the back and the intersections
between persons to the fore, insofar as they become the very places of
experimentation of the relational dynamics.17 The irreducibility of the person then
disappears and the very linkage of the relationship emerges.18 Again, it results
necessary to keep the personal component because it is the only way not to shift into
the horizontal and anonymous immanence of an ethics of nature; the ethics of
persons however needs to unfold its multifarious facets in order to avoid the other
way round a tendency to abstraction linked to the absolutization of the Other as a
unique and irreducible singularity.

7 As an opening conclusion: the practical relational ethics inherent

in E.R.I.C.’s post-psychiatric anthropology

The thrust of neurophenomenology lies in its taking into account of the validity of
the second person. It makes it possible, then, to appreciate its inner limits, namely
its difficulty to integrate the ethical relational component and, more specifically,
intersubjectivity understood as a pluripersonal experience. Why? Because the only
genuine experience is the in-between between a non-relational thought of the
singularity of the person (the You seen as an Absolute) and a relational immanent
thought which erases and tendencially forgets the irreducibility of the person.
Now, the psychiatric field and, in particular, the specific practice at work in the
home-emergency unit E.R.I.C. stresses the primacy of the relationships between the
different persons: such a stress renews the epistemology of the second person which
nevertheless grounds it.19 The relational anthropology which is brought to light with
its specific ethical orientation underlines the operative plurality of the multifarious
second persons.In short, shifting from the second person to the second persons is not
only a s-addition: it defines the very epistemology of such a relational ethics.
The psychiatric emergency unit E.R.I.C. (Equipe Rapide Intervention de Crise)20
was founded 1994 by S. Kannas21 in order to tackle the problem of the chronicity of
the hospitalization of the patients. As a matter of fact, the goal of this 24 h/24
working unit was to try each time to avoid hospitalizing the patients (actually, for
the time being half of them are not), the alternative being to help them staying at
home. How? The doctor and the nurse are committed to intervene together to the
17
Wittezaele (2003, pp. 31–101).
18
Elkaı̈m (1989).
19
Robin (1998).
20
Depraz (2005), Boszormenyi-Nagy (1987), Michard (1991).
21
Kannas (2000).

123
456 N. Depraz

patient’s house according to the relational method of coupling a doctor and a nurse
for each care. Now, the crisis situation creates a context where the family as well as
the family physicist are helpless. Given such a shared feeling of helplessness both
the doctor and the nurse work together in order to provide the family, the
educationers and the psychologists who already take care of the family with
renewed functional skills (as parents, as wife and husband, as professionals) within
the critical situation itself. Rather than increasing the feeling of powerlessness of the
relatives and despising a patient who is already in a precarious situation, the caring
team restores the feeling of self-confidence of the relatives and of the patient. While
furnishing them with a one-month-follow-up after the first care, the doctor and the
nurse endeavour to confirm the lived inner competence of the close relatives of the
patient, that is, help them becoming confident about their own ability to truly relate
to each other and above all to the so-called patient. Now, what is striking in such a
kind of practice is not only the professional deontology, which thwarts the frequent
objectivation of the ill person and leads to the taking into account of the person
itself, but also its seeling paradoxal therapeutical efficiency. The leading motto
being: how not to be efficient in order to help the relatives and the patient being
efficient?
The crisis situation is an outstanding time which leads the family to the outburst
of its usual markers: contrary to what claims the family, namely an homeostatic
return to the previous family system, we decide to use such a time in order let
emerge the multifarious relational problems by naming them, in order to make
reemerge the organic functionality of the family, whereas the latter had been
destroyed by the dysfunctional dimensions which brought about the critical state:
E.R.I.C.’s practice lies in intensifying the outburst of the links, namely, in
developing the going out of the frame. Of course, such an intensifying process does
not aim at being destructive. On the contrary: it creates a letting-go of some inner
resistances, which will help each person naming more genuinely what is responsible
for her suffering. Consequently, the aftermath of the crisis does not necessarily
amounts to returning to the previous pre-critical situation. On the contrary: the
immediate feeling of our own sufferings and the ability to name them with certain
persons produces a radical transformative effect.
The dynamic of resonances is therefore used in each crisis intervention: the
doctor and the nurse are involved in the different talks with and within the different
members of the family because they listen through the talks of the latter the way
they relate to their own lived experiences (their personal history, their inner
sufferings). They experience again their own history as mirrowing the history of the
family, and such a cross-mirrowing experience provides them with a surprising
mostly affective know-how to enter anew the suffering of the family: as a matter of
fact their own suffering is directly emerging through the way they talk to the family,
that is, handle the whole situation. Such an affective bath is a full-fledged method
which enables them to put right questions, because they know from inside what they
talk about since they went through it already. Far from presenting themselves as
neutral external observers, they use their own affective life as a methodical indicator
of their therapeutic action towards the family.

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Empathy and second-person methodology 457

As a result, it appears that he dynamic of questioning is common to the affect-

laden resonances and to the phenomenological method of e´poche`; the latter however
illuminates the former by embedding the local gesture of e´poche` into the whole set
of practical resonant moves. Correlatively the resonance is enlightened by the
e´poche` insofar as the latter stresses the specific quality of its suspending time.
Because of the resonant setting, the family is immersed into the dynamic and begins
to resonate with the other systems; because of the time-suspension of e´poche`, the
family is invited to get a broader view of the situation. Observing distance (e´poche`)
and affective adherence (resonance) might appear at first sight contradictory. As a
matter of fact, they are fully complementary. There is even a kind of conjunctive
functioning of resonance and suspension: first for the family who is able to suspend
its prejudices of powerlessness and to recreate its own relational ability; second in
turn for the emergency team who suspends its competence by resonating with the
family and thus helps providing each member of the family with its functional
competence of father, mother and child. The interplay of such relational couplings
reveals the ethical component of the whole functioning: the cross-process of
suspending and resonating enables each one to be re-established in one’s own skill
whereas each might have been discredited had the social or care hierarchies been
put to the fore.22
By joining suspension and resonance it is thus possible to avoid the risk of the
horizontal immanence of relational circularity and to open up the possibility of
understanding the person as being fully conscious of the relational component. So
we have neither to do with a joint dialectical circularity where the three persons are
homogeneously situated on the same level (in contextual systemic therapies for
example), nor with an exclusive primacy given to the second person (in
psychoanalytic care for example). Here each person acts at one and the same time
unanimously with the others but differently for each. In that respect, the relational
cell is not the smallest common denominator: it would suppress irreducible aspects.
For what is common is what is shared while being only partially included in each
perspective. In short, in contrast with the phenomenological transcendence, which
amounts to an intentional dynamic of relatedness with an object, the movement of
self-transcending corresponds to the emergence of a subjective inner dimension
which is in a sense trespassing each individual subject and nonetheless fully
involved in each one. Each person thus arises in her own dynamic while relating
both to the others and to her personal vitality. It is truly what Maxim the Confessor
early called the tropos of the person: her quality, her style, her manner, her changing
aspects, in short, her alterity, her energy, in contrast with her logos (her unchanging
essence, her nature).23 In other words, the energy of each person is part of the whole
relational dynamic without being fully absorbed in it, all the same.24 It resonates
with such a dynamic while nourishing it from inside and while finding in it a
suspension which allows to remain oneself through it.

22
Depraz and Mauriac (2005).
23
Larchet (1996: pp. 141–151), Yannaras (1983), Zizioulas (1981).
24
Yannaras (1986).

123
458 N. Depraz

Such a process is frequently at work in the practice of many professionals dealing

with a relational therapeutic work. The unit E.R.I.C. chose (because of its
organization, its dynamic and the history of its constitution) to make use of such an
energy in order to be able to deal with the context of crisis and emergency: in this
regard the term second persons is meant to describe a lived experience which is the
common ground of such a practice but is usually never taken into account for it is
not easily descriptible.

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