I-It, I-You, I-Thou

by Rod Paynter

(Originally published in Volume 2, Number 3 of the CALSCA Newsletter, December, 1995.)

At a recent meeting, my Mentor, my Mentor’s Mentor, my Intern, my Intern’s Intern and I, that is to say all three of us, thrashed through some theory competencies. A large part of our discussion was about I-Thou. Is I-Thou an attitude or a skill, can it be learned, practiced, used, taught and transferred? Is caring essential to I-Thou? Can I develop a caring attitude by practicing the behaviours of caring, like I-Thou? The Dynamics gives some help by describing behaviours that can encourage I-Thou, but on the whole we were without recourse to reference for our discussion.

Since then it’s been one more time through the FIBRE formula for me, describing attending behaviours to a new Life Skills group. As almost always happens, someone challenged the language. ‘What’s this THOU stuff? Are we getting married here or what? I didn’t come here for Bible talk!’ As always, I didn’t know. That’s just the way I was taught, I didn’t know where it comes from or why. Not very satisfactory to me or my participant, but that’s how it’s been for me throughout my career. Until now!

This morning over breakfast I was reading M. Scott Peck’s book 'A World Waiting To Be Born' (New York: Bantam Books, 1993). Here’s what I found on pages 44-45:

"Approximately sixty years ago, the great Jewish theologian Martin Buber wrote a dense, scholarly, almost unreadable book whose title has been translated into English as 'I and Thou' (trans. Walter Kaufman (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1970)).

"As its title indicates, Buber labeled the most healthy or mature relationship possible between two human beings as the ‘I - Thou’ relationship. In such an instance, I recognize you to be different from me, but even though you are different - a ’You’ or other - you can still be beloved to me; namely a ‘Thou.’ Such relationships are relatively rare. Indeed, one should not even aspire to too many of them since they require a lot of work. For instance, I do not have an I - Thou relationship with my tax lawyer. I do recognize him to be different from me: a You. Indeed, it is precisely because he is different from me - because he has gifts different from mine - that he is so valuable to me, but I have not yet taken the energy (nor am I likely to do so) to make him particularly beloved to me. Most of the time we go around having I - You relationships. There is nothing unethical about this as long as we recognize and respect the essential humanity of each other.

"But the problem comes, as Buber indelibly points out, when we lose sight of the humanity of the other simply because he or she is other. Consequently, Buber contrasted the I - Thou relationship with what he called the I - It relationship. This occurs when I see you as a subhuman, even inanimate object - an ‘It’ - simply to be used, as we might use a chair or shovel."

I-It, I-You, I-Thou. Like the man says, it takes a lot of work, but that’s the work we’re in. This really helps me focus on just what I’m doing and what I’m asking of my participants. It really helped my group see what I’ve been talking about. I hope that it helps you too.