The Subject of Otherness, The Subject as Otherness

The great French Philosopher, Emmanuel Levinas, expressed the fundamental paradox of the human condition such: “subjectivity is structured as the other in the same.” (Levinas, 1981, p. 25) Psychoanalysis is founded on a similar premise, that there are in each of us matters and forces that are other to the conscious and deliberate self. This otherness in/of the self is conceived in different analytic frameworks in different ways. Freud, although he did not use such language, began his thinking with the enigma of forces beyond the subject’s control invading her experience.