Kurt Goldstein (1878-1965) Selected Papers (1971)
The smiling of the infant and the problem of understanding the "other" (1957)
...I was reassured concerning my procedure when I realized that the data I refer to represent, so to say, empirical illustrations for essential results achieved through ontological insight. One example is Heidegger's statement: "Die Welt des Daseins ist Mitwelt. Das In-Sein (das in der Welt Sein) ist Mitsein mit anderen."
(The world of human existence consists in a world of to-be-with. To-be-in (to be in the world), is being with others.)
Another example is Guardini's position: "Die Person ist nur dann sinnvoll, wenn es andere gibt." (To speak of a "person" is meaningful only with the provision that there are other persons in the world.) In my opinion these ontological observations find their parallel in the results of my own studies, pointing out that "self-realization," i.e., human existence, is possible only in relation to the self-realization of the "other."
...This is the structure of the mutual smiling of friends in encounter. This experience of the same adequate world is the presupposition of the understanding of the other one, of all our knowledge of what is taking place in the "other." This is the foundation of understanding language. It is the basis of all friendship, of all love, where with surprise and astonishment we recognize that what is taking place in the "other" is identical with what is taking place in us.
...I would like to add that it is not simply the effect of the experience of unity, of the manifestation of adequacy and of the feeling of well-being, but ultimately it is related to the experience of the possibility of realizing oneself. This is what fills us with so much joy in the "encounter." The fact that it is the experience of self-realization which is elicited by the "encounter" explains why we are so deeply disappointed when we have erred, whether it be that the other was someone else than we thought or whether he has changed in the meantime. This disappointment is so profound because it represents, so to say, a shaking of our own existence.