To Be Met as a Human Being
From Dissertation to Essay
We use the word recognition often.
We speak about the need for recognition in the family, at school, in working life, and in society. We say that people need to be seen, heard, and taken seriously.
But what is it we are really longing for?
Praise?
Affirmation?
Agreement?
Perhaps recognition is something far more fundamental.
Perhaps it means being met as a human being before being met as a problem.
More Than Being Affirmed
It is easy to confuse recognition with affirmation.
If someone agrees with me, I may feel recognised.
If someone praises me, I may feel valued.
But recognition is not the same as being proved right.
A person may be deeply recognised by someone who nevertheless disagrees.
And a person may be overlooked by someone who offers many compliments.
Recognition therefore does not primarily concern the content of words.
It concerns the way in which the other person is encountered.
When the Person Is Reduced
A violation rarely concerns only what happens.
It also concerns how the person is understood.
A child who is subjected to abuse is not only deprived of safety.
The child also risks being reduced.
To a body.
To an object.
To someone else’s needs.
This reduction may continue long after the violation itself has ended.
It may happen through diagnoses.
Through prejudice.
Through mistrust.
Through well-intentioned explanations that become larger than the person.
We reduce the other when we believe that one story can explain an entire life.
The Professional Temptation
Professions depend upon understanding.
That is necessary.
We need concepts, theories, and diagnostic categories. They help us recognise patterns and develop knowledge.
But the same knowledge contains a danger.
We may begin to see the theory before we see the person.
We may become so preoccupied with the explanation that we lose sight of the one we are trying to explain.
The other person then becomes an example.
A category.
A case.
Not a human being.
This is one of the quiet temptations of professional life.
To Be Believed
Through the work on my doctoral dissertation, one experience became increasingly clear.
Many people did not long primarily for solutions.
They longed to be believed.
Not uncritically.
But sincerely.
To be met with questions that sought to understand rather than questions designed primarily to control.
This does not mean abandoning critical thought.
It concerns the point of departure.
Do we meet the other person with a fundamental openness?
Or with a hidden suspicion?
The difference can be felt.
Recognition and Dignity
Dignity cannot be given by others.
It belongs to the human being.
Yet it may be affirmed—or violated—through the way we encounter one another.
We may speak to a person in a way that makes them smaller.
We may also speak in a way that gradually allows the person to reclaim their own dignity.
This is not sentimentality.
It is an ethical responsibility.
A person who has lived with shame for a long time does not primarily need to hear that everything will be all right.
Many need to experience that their human worth was never dependent upon what was done to them.
The Slow Encounter
Recognition rarely takes place dramatically.
It often grows through small moments.
A gaze that does not judge.
A helper who remembers your name.
A question that is allowed to remain open.
A silence that is not filled with impatience.
In this way, experiences are created that may gradually transform something profound.
Not because one conversation changes a life.
But because many small encounters slowly create another understanding of what an encounter between human beings can be.
Bearing the Other Person’s Reality
One of the most difficult aspects of helping work is to bear the fact that the other person’s experience may not fit our own assumptions.
We want coherence.
Explanations.
Control.
But human lives can rarely be fully ordered.
The good helper therefore does not attempt to force the other person into a ready-made understanding.
The good helper tries to remain long enough for a shared understanding to emerge.
This requires professional knowledge.
But also humility.
The Ethics of Dialogue
Through the work on my dissertation, I became increasingly concerned with Martin Buber’s simple but demanding thought:
A human being can never fully become a Thou if we primarily encounter them as an It.
This does not concern philosophy alone.
It concerns everyday life.
When we become more concerned with function than with the person.
With the record rather than the life.
With the diagnosis rather than the voice.
The encounter then shifts almost imperceptibly into administration.
Dialogue therefore does not begin with technique.
It begins with attitude.
Recognition as Courage
It requires courage to encounter another human being.
Not because people are dangerous.
But because the other person is always more than we can control.
We can never fully know how another person experiences the world.
Yet we may choose to approach them with respect.
We may choose to listen before explaining.
To ask before concluding.
To try to understand before evaluating.
This is not weakness.
It is professional strength.
The Invisible Change
Some of the most important changes in a person’s life are almost invisible.
A person who once sat with their eyes fixed on the floor lifts their head.
Another begins to use the word “I” more often.
A third dares to disagree.
Such changes are difficult to measure.
Yet they may express that something fundamental is beginning to happen.
The person is slowly beginning to experience themselves as a participant in their own life.
More Than a Method
It is tempting to turn recognition into a method.
Something that can be learned through the correct techniques.
But recognition begins before method.
It begins in our view of the human being.
In the question of who the other person is.
Is this primarily a client?
A patient?
A diagnosis?
Or a human being whose life is always greater than what I currently understand?
No method can answer this question once and for all.
It must be asked again in every encounter.
To Be Seen Without Being Reduced
Perhaps this is the deepest meaning of recognition.
Not that a person is admired.
Not that they are always proved right.
Not that the pain disappears.
But that they are encountered in a way that allows them to be more than their injury.
More than their diagnosis.
More than their shame.
More than their history.
Through the work on my doctoral dissertation, this gradually remained as one of the most important insights.
The helper’s task is not to define a person’s life.
It is to contribute to making it possible for the person once again to become the author of their own.
Perhaps this is precisely what recognition means.
To encounter another human being in such a way that it slowly becomes possible for them to encounter themselves with less fear—and with a little more dignity.
Recognition means;
To encounter another human being in such a way that it slowly becomes possible
for them to encounter themselves with less fear
—and with a little more dignity.
This essay was written in a conversation witg ChatGPT
This essay is part of the series “From Dissertation to Essay” and is based particularly on the dissertation’s existential-dialogical discussions of recognition, dialogue, dignity, relationships, and the helper’s ethical responsibility in encounters with people who have experienced violations: Pettersen, K. T. (2009). An Exploration into the Concept and Phenomenon of Shame within the Context of Child Sexual Abuse: An Existential-Dialogical Perspective of Social Work within the Settings of a Norwegian Incest Centre. NTNU.
