The Vision of the Self in Dialogue

Maurice Friedman's concept of self seems to stand midway between that of self as structure in modern object relations theory and the postmodern focus on meaning within dialogue and discourse.

Friedman, leaning upon the work of Buber, describes a dialogical view of the self that both allows for a central core that is unique and ongoing, yet that requires the l-Thou dialogue to come into real-ization. Our uniqueness is not an “it” that can be captured on an MMPI readout or caught like a butterfly in a net. Passing one's hand through the northern lights might more aptly, though poetically, speak to the experience of contact with our unique and ongoing core self. Our uniqueness has an is-ness to it. We can't describe it without losing that which is its essential quality. We can just be it. This uniqueness, or rather some small facet of it, becomes revealed to ourself and to the other through the specific dialogue with a separate and unique other. This interplay of two uniquenesses is described by Ingram as the signature of the relationship. Friedman attempts to capture that uniqueness when he describes the “touchstones of reality … those basic attitudes that are imprinted on us by the signal events in our lives and that we bring with us to our meeting with new events.”

This essay might equally well have been called “Selves in Dialogue.” To enter into dialogue means to step into essential relation with another self. What is more, we become selves in the first instance through our meeting