Ethics,Alterity, and Psychotherapy: A Levinasian Perspective |
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Authors: | Alvin Dueck Thomas D Parsons |
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Institution: | (1) Graduate School of Psychology, Fuller Theological Seminary, 180 N. Oakland, Pasadena, CA 91101, USA;(2) Institute for Creative Technologies, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA |
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Abstract: | Current psychologies of religion reflect the modernist context in which they are situated. Religion is reduced to what is
researchable, generalizable, individual and “thin.” This essay suggests that a psychology of religion which takes seriously
the implications of Emmanuel Levinas’s emphasis on ethics and the alterity of the Other would result in a different model
of psychotherapy. Levinas’s view of the Other as the trace of the transcendent radically changes our understanding of the
client within the therapeutic relationship. Levinas begins with ethics and so healing would be, by implication, an ethical
enterprise. In a highly secularized, individualized, objectivized culture, a therapy which recognizes the sacred, which models
how to view the Other as transcendent, and which does not presume to know, is a gift to the client. |
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Keywords: | Levinas Alterity Ethics Psychotherapy Enlightenment Modernity |
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