The author acknowledges having misunderstood aspects of the relationalists' concept of mutual recognition, in part because relationalists and intersubjective systems phenomenologists are working within different language games or discourses that are not easily inter-translatable. Useful as recognition may be, we can refuse to grant it full explanatory generality in psychoanalytic practice and theory. Concepts like trauma, asymmetric responsibility, the suffering other, and dialogic understanding can also find a place.