 One might see the position of Husserl, Sartre and Merleau-Ponty as being situated between two extremes. On the one hand, we have the view that reflection merely copies or mirrors pre-reflective experience faithfully, and on the other hand we have the view that reflection distorts lived experience. The middle course is to recognize that reflection involves a gain and a loss. For Husserl, Sartre, and Merleau-Ponty, reflection is constrained by what is pre-reflectively lived through. It is answerable to experiential facts and is not constitutively self-fulfilling. At the same time, however, they recognized that reflection qua thematic self-experience does not simply reproduce the lived experiences unaltered and that this is precisely what makes reflection cognitively valuable. The experiences reflected upon are transformed in the process, to various degrees and manners depending upon the type of reflection at work. Subjectivity consequently seems to be constituted in such a fashion that it can and, at times, must relate to itself in an “othering” manner. This self-alteration is something inherent to reflection; it is not something that reflection can overcome.