Phil, You did clarify. Believe me when I say that Sartre had a lot in common with the Gestalt theorists! You are right when you said that the in-itself and the for-itself are both contained within the self. It is what Sartre defined as the duality of human condition. In this case there is little or no similarity between the I-thou and the I-it. Sartre (my interpretation) would have defined the I-thou as the being in-itself (reality,for lack of a better term). The I-it would,more or less, be the "being for other". Here is where I see a strong similarity in what He (Sartre) said and the Gestalts. Sartre put a major emphasis on the being for other as heavily dependent on the being for other being(pardon the redundancy) authentic and in "Good Faith". The Gestalts are defining the being for other (I-it) as being inauthenic. Do you see what I see? He is defining the being for other as being responsible for itself. You appear to define the being for other as being inauthentis. Sartre was cautioning us against this potential inauthenticity which you contend is false or inauthentic. Seems to me that the dude was ahead of his time. Sartre was an extrodinarily gifted thinker. I must reference two of his major works here. One THE TRANSCENDENCE OF THE EGO and BEING AND NOTHINGNESS . I may be somewhat passee but I have yet to read ANYTHING that parallels these works in contempory philosophy. Bear in mind that Sartre was a thinker(philosopher) not a practicioner. By all creteria,in my book, he was the real deal. We should never hold ones political beliefs against them. I consider myself a patriot and I know Sartre was a communist. Everyone is entitled to at least one mistake.........................Ed............................................................................................PS. I hads the good fortune of having a professor in Humanities at Penn State named Aaron Druckman (1969). He had met Sartre in NYC on his first and only known trip to the USA. When he asked Sartre what he thought of America hsi response was "it is a very exciting country".