In the third year of my Relational Psychodynamic Therapy (RPT) program, we were asked to conduct a project on an area of learning we wanted to explore more deeply. My project was inspired by a question that has been central to my work and writing: “What is the nature of the ‘Essential I’ and how does it relate to Love?”
While I won’t go into the second part of that question in this post, I did want to share how I have currently put some structure around the ‘essential I’ concept. It’s a term I’ve referenced frequently, but it deserves a closer look.
From Subjectivity to a Relational Stance
I currently find the ‘essential I’ to consist of two components.
I first encountered the ‘essential I’ in Roy Barsness’ book, Psychodynamic Supervision Theory and Practices: In A New Key. He describes it as “a term that relates to the use of the therapist’s subjectivity and the ‘essentialness’ of the therapist’s presence in conducting psychotherapy”.
This definition was a powerful starting point. It affirmed the importance of our presence in the therapeutic space. Yet, upon reading this, I was still left with a question: “Okay, but what is it? What constitutes the ‘essential I’?”
This led me to develop my own working definition:
The essential I is a relational way of being with self and other, characterized by radical openness, desire, dignity, and humility from which spontaneity, creativity, and vitality can arise.
Let’s break down what each of these components means.
1. A Relational Way of Being
“Differing from an idea of a ‘True’ or ‘Core Self,’ the Essential I is a stance or way of positioning oneself in relationship with self and others. It has the capacity to stand in the spaces between multiple realities and metabolize them—asking, ‘What the hell is going on here anyways?’—without collapsing or losing any of their complexity.”
2. Radical Openness to Self and Other
This quality is a cornerstone of the essential I and has two dimensions:
- Intrapersonal: A way of being open to the complexities of one’s multitude and evolving self-states, identities, beliefs and values and a developing capacity to “hold” and metabolize the affective tensions among them with less shame or collapse.
- Interpersonal: A surrendered stance of willingness to have another “I” impact or “get under the skin of” one’s own being. With an appreciation of the multiplicity and infiniteness of the other as never fully “knowable” but still sacred and worthy of relationship.
3. Desire
The essential I wants. It has an open and assertive relationship with desire and privileges directness rather than passivity or vagueness with what one wants out of life and relationships.
The essential I has an honoring relationship with their own desire inasmuch as they are willing to hold the tension between what their subjectivity longs for and what the subject of their desire is willing or able to to participate in. Much like inviting someone to dance, desire and vulnerability work hand in hand to both stand in their own position of wanting while being open to the other and the joys and pains of what the dance entails.
4. Dignity and Humility
The “I” claims the sacredness of themselves and the other. It has standards and limits for how they are treated and what they are able to relationally offer to another. The “I” also understands itself as “one I among many I’s” which opens the space for humor, co-participation, and an awareness of death that infuses one’s life with meaning.
The Fruits of the Essential I: Spontaneity, Creativity, and Vitality
When these ingredients—presence, radical openness, desire, dignity, and humility—are cultivated, something remarkable happens. Spontaneity, creativity, and vitality naturally emerge.
But this is not ‘static’ in a sense of ‘once you have it you keep it’. Different circumstances, relationships, or situations can impact one’s connection to their “I”ness. The process looks more like a recognition when one has less contact with their presence and can curiously and slowly come back to this way of being with self and other.
It reminds me of John O’Donohue’s poem, “For a New Beginning,” which speaks of a new path quietly forming within us, waiting until we are ready.
In out-of-the-way places of the heart,
Where your thoughts never think to wander,
This beginning has been quietly forming,
Waiting until you were ready to emerge.
For a long time it has watched your desire,
Feeling the emptiness growing inside you,
Noticing how you willed yourself on,
Still unable to leave what you had outgrown.
It watched you play with the seduction of safety
And the gray promises that sameness whispered,
Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent,
Wondered would you always live like this.
Then the delight, when your courage kindled,
And out you stepped onto new ground,
Your eyes young again with energy and dream,
A path of plenitude opening before you.
Though your destination is not yet clear
You can trust the promise of this opening;
Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning
That is at one with your life’s desire.
Awaken your spirit to adventure;
Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk;
Soon you will home in a new rhythm,
For your soul senses the world that awaits you.
Of the many gifts of the RPT program, the “beginning” it has offered me to cultivate and live more freely from this ‘essential I’ will continue to bless me and those I come into contact with for the rest of my life. And for that, I am deeply grateful.
May you continue to embrace and live more freely from your own “I”.
Alex