An other in psychoanalysis: Emmanuel Levinas's critique of knowledge and analytic sense

The paper engages the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas, particularly his critique of ontological thought and knowing, to examine some of the basic premises of psychoanalysis. The author argues that, viewed through Levinas's notions of The Other and of ethics, traditional psychoanalysis represents an ethically problematic discursive position since it conforms unambivalently to social-knowledge-power structures. The author suggests that psychoanalysis is inherently a conflicted discourse. He traces the development of psychoanalytic awareness to the concerns of otherness in the shift from one- to two-person psychology and in the thought made possible in the relational school. Bringing together Levinas's critical-ethical considerations and contemporary psychoanalytic conceptions of subjectivity and intersubjective relations, the author argues for more awareness of the ethical implications of different aspects of analytic theory and practice, and against the limitations of Levinas's extreme ethics. He concludes in suggesting deliberate ambivalence as the best-possible theoretical and clinical position.

https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2008-13115-003