Since nursing involves one human being helping another, the notion of humaneness has been associated traditionally with nursing. Nursing practice is criticized justifiably when it is not humane and is taken for granted or praised when it is. The expectation of humaneness is so ingrained in the concept of nursing that some nurses are surprised when it is acknowledged by patients. If a patient thanks them for their kindness, patience, or concern, these nurses reply, in their embarrassment, "Oh, that's part of my job." However, to equate nursing's humanistic character solely with an overflowing of the milk of human kindness is a serious error of oversimplification. Such a limited view, in fact, is a dehumanizing denial of man's potentials. As a human transaction, the phenomenon of nursing contains all the human potentials and limitations of each unique participant. For instance, frustration, discouragement, anger, rejection, withdrawal, loneliness, aggression, impatience, envy, grief, despair, pain, and suffering are constituents of nursing, as well as tenderness, caring, courage, trust, joy, hope. In other words, since nursing is lived by humans, the "stuff" of nursing includes all possible responses of man--man needing and man helping--in his situation. Intersubjective Transaction Looking again at the phenomenon of nursing as it occurs in the real lived world, obviously it is always an interhuman event. Whenever nursing takes {13} place two (or more) human beings are related in a shared situation. Each participates according to his own mode of being in the situation, that is, as a person nursing or as a person begin nursed. Since one is nursing and the other is being nursed, it follows that the essential character of the situation is "nurturance." In other words, the phenomenon of nursing involves nurturing, being nurtured, and a relation--the "between" in which or through which the nurturance occurs. On reflection, it is obvious that nursing is an intersubjective transaction. Both persons, nurse and patient (client, family, group), necessarily participate in the proceedings. In this sense, they are _inter_dependent. Yet, they are both subjects, that is, each is the originator of human acts and of human responses to the other. In this sense, they are _in_dependent. The intersubjective transactional character of nursing cannot be escaped when one is experiencing the phenomenon, either as nurse or as patient. Consider for example, some of the most common nursing activities, such as, feeding and being fed, comforting and being comforted, giving and taking medications. Although this intersubjectivity is unmistakably known in experience, it is extremely difficult to conceptualize and convey it to others. It rarely is found in descriptions of nursing, and to the unfortunate extent that it is missing, the descriptions are not true to life.