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We draw on the clinical psychoanalysis of primary identification to assess Honneth’s conception of the claim to recognition, which he views as a confirmation of one’s identity by the other. We first show that this conception, by misreading Winnicott due to Trevarthen’s influence, suffers from an innatist bias: its reduction of the other to a function of confirmation stems from an initial attribution to the subject of an innate Self. Against this, we draw on the clinical approach of precocious interactions to show that the function of the recognition received from the Other is not confirmation, but constitution of the Self – it conditions primary identification. Drawing on a case of parent-infant cotherapy, we develop the kind of reflexivity which this recognition must deploy to promote the work of primary identification, in introducing the notion of the visual function of holding, or visual holding; thus appears the absence of innate Self in the child. To conclude, we claim that Honneth’s model of recognition as confirmation is inadequate because of its specular nature; we propose to replace it with a symbolic recognition which, by equating primary identification with alienation to the signifier, paradoxically frees the subject from any definitive attribution of identity.