Running head: LEVINAS AND PSYCHOLOGICAL PRACTICE 1

Interiority and Exteriority: Levinas and Psychological Practice

David Flaxer

Seattle University
LEVINAS AND PSYCHOLOGICAL PRACTICE 2

Abstract

This paper examines the applicability of Emmanuel Levinas’s philosophical concept of

interiority and exteriority in psychological practice. It considers various implications of

movement between these existentially lived states as a paradigm for treating the suffering

patient. In particular, it addresses the ability of the patient to break through the barrier of

interiority, and to interact with the world, despite their own internally focused suffering. The

objective of the therapeutic encounter is to help enable the patient to not only tend to herself but

also to grow resilient enough to assume the responsibility of caring for the Other. The therapist

serves the patient by providing his gifts, which includes the idea of radical intersubjectivity, a

form of ethical practice that is also a metaphysical relation. Within the forum of the therapist-

patient encounter, three ethical practices that are harmonious with Levinasian philosophy are

suggested. These include: self disclosure of the therapist to the patient, allowing the patient to

teach the therapist, and the enactment of the ethical relation through the practice of radical

intersubjectivity. The relationship between philosophy and psychology is discussed. It is argued

that both fields of thought are required for the therapeutic encounter to be meaningful.

Keywords: Levinas, exteriority, interiority, ethics, intersubjectivity, metaphysics

LEVINAS AND PSYCHOLOGICAL PRACTICE 3

Interiority and Exteriority: Home and the World

Levinas asserts the concept of interiority and exteriority as a basic component in his

philosophy. The world of Others is a world of ethical commitment and responsibility. Where

ever we go in the world, present in our human interactions, Others in their suffering call to us.

Our nature is such that we cannot truly evade their cry. With such insistent demands, insatiable

in their neediness, where can we go for respite and peace, to care for the egoist “I” that is also in

our nature, and to enjoy the fruits of our labor? Levinas observes that it is in the place of

interiority that we go for required renewal and enjoyment. “Egoism, enjoyment, sensibility, and

the whole dimension of interiority —the articulations of separation—are necessary for the idea

of Infinity, the relation with the Other which opens forth from the separated and finite being”

(Levinas, 1969, p.66). Separation can be achieved by a physical partitioning of a space that is

personal and private and that physical space is called home. But interiority may also be

interpreted as a psychological haven, where the separation of the “I” from the exterior is secured

leading to a private psychic retreat.

The home is a place of refuge from the responsibilities of the world. As Levinas (1969)

writes, “To be separated is to be at home with oneself” (p. 147). The isolation of the home

provides a respite to the demands of the world. It is a private and comfortable place that is a

sanctuary and a blessing. The home accommodates our interiority, and accordingly, allows us to

reflect on the conditions of our life. Reflection constitutes the acts of remembering, recollecting,

considering and evaluating. In reflection we are led to a renewal of ideas, actions, plans and

activities that we accomplish in the exterior world. This respite brings us renewal and generates

the energy to enter the world that calls to us from just beyond the walls of our home, and to act

responsibly and ethically within it. The home is the concretization of a place of needed separation,
LEVINAS AND PSYCHOLOGICAL PRACTICE 4

says Levinas “The home occupies a privileged place” (1969, p. 152). The need for a home is

embedded in our nature; so much so that even those with nothing still seek to delineate a private

space, be it a cardboard box, in order to sleep relaxed and unguarded.

Consider then the psychological perspective of interiority, the confluence of mind and

body, where we exist in our ipseity. This is the center place of the “I”: our cognitive thoughts, our

embodied feelings, all components of our unrelenting observant ego. It is a private interior world

that none can enter. It is a given that when we are in the world we present our face to the Other, so

expressive, which is beyond our very control. But to share in our psychological interiority we

must speak, for it is only in dialog with the Other can we avail ourselves to the exteriority of the

world.

Our psychological interiority provides us a place to dwell in comfort; to be at home within

ourselves. However, while psychological interiority presents a barrier to the world, it cannot be so

concrete as to prevent the world from reaching us. Interiority must be a permeable membrane,

susceptible to penetration by the exterior world, and must permit our senses to feel and respond to

its influence. “In the separated being the door to the outside must hence be at the same time both

open and closed.” says Levinas (1969, p.149). If a person were to exist only in interiority one

would be introverted in narcissistic isolation; if a person lived only in exteriority one would be

hyper-manic. In either case, existence would be psychosis.

The Meaning and Objective of Psychological Therapy

A patient comes to therapy for many reasons. She may be facing an immediate and

stressful crisis: the ending of a major relationship, the death of a loved one, a financial

catastrophe, or a health setback. Perhaps she is experiencing deep depression or excessive

mania, or a cycling between them. She may be engaged in a joyless and general unhappiness
LEVINAS AND PSYCHOLOGICAL PRACTICE 5

and dissatisfaction in her life activities, relations and profession. Or, she may be experiencing a

more deeply felt loss of self esteem, an acute sense of anxiety and an eerie feeling of

disconnection from the world in which she lives, leaving her drifting and alienated. Maybe she

has fallen into a habitual pattern of destructive behavior such as gambling, consumerism or

substance abuse. The reasons go on and on. All aspects of the human condition and our

suffering are represented by patients: the neurotic, the psychotic, those with mild or deep seated

behavioral issues, mood disorders, loss of identity, life crisis, anxiety and alienation, or existence

in a joyless and negative state.

What do all these conditions have in common? They are our dysfunctional reactions to

existing in the world, of human life itself. The consequence of these events is the embodiment of

suffering, which more often than not, results in psychological internalization: a fixed condition

of separation, loneliness and hopelessness.

The practice of psychology, with its methods, processes and techniques for relating to the

patient, for treating cognitive, behavioral and affective disorders, goes just so far. It is not in the

realm of psychology to address the underlying meanings of life. It cannot present a context of

existing, and for this we look to works of philosophy. Here we seek an existential and

metaphysical context in which to organize and secure a psychological practice.

This is where the Levinasian notions of interiority and exteriority, the alterity of the

Other and the practice of ethical responsibility come into play in the therapeutic forum. It sets a

philosophic view of human existence, defining the bounds and benefits of separation from the

world and the responsibility one has for oneself and for the Other. From this philosophic point of

view the psychologist can approach the patient in treatment, enabling a path from suffering to

transformation.
LEVINAS AND PSYCHOLOGICAL PRACTICE 6

What then is the goal of ethical psychological practice? Alvin Dueck and David

Goodman (2007) first provide a picture of what it is not: an exercise in personal identity and

power.

The focus is less on encouraging the client to assert him or herself, exercise rights and
power, master the ego and the environment. The goal is not so much individuation from
the Other, the constellating of a unique identity. Nor is the self constellated in comparing
oneself to Others as one being among many so as to discover one’s uniqueness in abilities
and differentness in personality. (p. 615)

In a Levinasian perspective the goal of therapy is to enable the patient to exercise the

ethical call to responsibility: to care for the Other. As Steen Halling (1975) writes: “The

therapy situation might then not just be a protective environment where one is relieved of

distress, but a place where one is called from unreal obligation and false guilt to real

responsibility and genuine guilt in the face of the Other” (p. 218).

The Notion of Interiority and Exteriority in the Therapeutic Forum

It is posited that a significant portion of neurosis and psychoses is founded on an

obsessive focus on the patient’s own conditions of suffering, such that she remains fixed in her

personal interiority, unable to sense and break through the barrier that partitions her from the

world. This is a psychological condition that locks the mind, behavior and affect, resulting in a

mild to sometimes profoundly dysfunctional existential state. The suffering patient is stuck

egoistically in her interiority, unable to recognize or respond to the callings of the exterior world.

She may be fixed on her own problems and immediate issues. Her perspective may be self-

centered and narcissistic. She may feel distrustful or paranoid. Whatever her state of existence

is, one thing is clear, she is feeling encapsulated in her personal interiority.

Existence is not static and all is in constant change; it is only in mental dysfunction and

emotional disturbance that one’s life seems static and unchanging. “With alienation, isolation,
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loneliness …we can summarize the fact that all these mental states never stand by themselves

and are never abstractions, but ceaselessly reveal themselves in the reality of the surrounding

world, in the reality of objects in the reality of personal relationships, and in the reality of body

and of time” (van den Berg, 1972, p. 108). In other words, in neurosis and psychosis the patient

is stuck in a timeless and unchanging existence, locked in an internal separation infinitely distant

from the fraternity of Others.

We are in our nature intersubjective beings. It is in our wiring as a human animal, when

at the dawn of man we huddled together in social bond to insure our survival. Within the

Levinasian perspective, the beginning of radical intersubjectivity is viewed as a relation to the

Other in total ethical responsibility: hearing the cry of the Other, understanding and appreciating

their alterity and responding with open giving. The one who suffers presents her face to the

Other, so passive and expressive, which is beyond her very control. However, even for the

sufferer, a radical intersubjectivity places an ethical responsibility for her as well: she should at

least try to recognize the gifts that are extended to her by the Other, which is to say, she should

endeavor to be open to the exterior world. But when the sufferer is locked beyond her ability to

control her interiority this essential intersubjectivity is broken and psychological pathology must

surely follow.

The suffering patient that is hopelessly caught in interiority is unable to enter the world to

announce her suffering. She cannot intentionally turn her face to Others around her. She cannot

intentionally cry for help in a voice that can be understood. She cannot hope to receive the aid of

Others; she is unable to receive gifts when given. She is lost and adrift in an interior that permits

no contact. There is yet a more profound loss in this rigid interiority: as she is mute and has no

voice for calling, she has no ears to hear the cries of Others. She cannot go beyond her self and
LEVINAS AND PSYCHOLOGICAL PRACTICE 8

cannot break the crust that separates her from the exterior. There is little if any sense of

intersubjectivity. There is no opportunity to meet the ethical responsibility to the Other; to do so

would require a release of focus on her own suffering, an egoistic grasp that obscures everything

but her pain. She misses the bond of fraternity. And worse yet, she denies herself the

opportunity for transcendence found in the move to ethical responsibility to Others.

As a patient she is present in the therapeutic encounter, which by itself is a first

movement to exteriority. Herein provides a strategy by which the ethical therapist is of aid: to be

a constant beacon of the exterior, a representative of fraternity, and an enabler of

intersubjectivity, such that the patient begins to penetrate the barrier that separates herself from

the world.

When a patient comes to therapy in a state of interiority, too fearful, stuck and weak to

act, the therapist can work with her to build an opening of hope and possibility. It is in these

cracks in the wall of interiority that the patient can exercise the courage to achieve a movement

to exteriority. As the patient comes to understand her relation to the Other a shift in her

existential existence may occur. She is no longer held in a lived-experience of isolation. She can

freely express herself to Others, she has the ability to recognize and receive the gifts of the

Other, and she can find an existential comfort in the relation. Now that interiority is made

porous a different context of existence is available to the patient.

Thus enacted, the patient’s psychological transformation may be achieved: less a goal of

self discovering and personal mastery, and more the recognition and assumption of ethical

responsibility and service to the Other.

Levinas and the Ethical Role of the Therapist

LEVINAS AND PSYCHOLOGICAL PRACTICE 9

Levinasian philosophy has much to say about the ethical practice of psychology and the

principles of the therapist: to hear the call of the patient in her suffering, to recognize her alterity

by not totalizing her, and to meet the ethical responsibility by responding to her needs, in such a

way that no violence is done to her. Edward Gantt powerfully describes the bounds of the

therapist’s ethical relation as follows (1994, p.55):

In providing a non-totalizing context wherein the therapist can responsively attend to the
Other as Other, dwelling-with occasions a genuine opportunity for desire to find ethical
expression in the primordiality of the face-to-face encounter. In order to be such,
however, it must be a "moment of un-concern" (Halling, 1975) in which the therapeutic
situation ceases to be composed of a dialectical or authoritarian totality: the one to heal
the one in need of healing. For, to approach the therapeutic situation armed with a
presumption of disease or disorder in the client, which is to be overcome through the
transformative powers of the therapist, is to engage in needlessly totalizing utopic
speculation. Dwelling-with is a moment in which, rather than dogmatically pursuing a
pre-established mode of therapy with a particular client-type in order to realize a
particular utopic dream, we stand open to the being of the other person who reveals a
world of mystery as they bear witness of themselves; a world which cannot be
appropriated in terms of preconceived categories or totalizing systems. It is that moment
in which we give up the vain justifications of a self indulgent utopic idealism and, in its
stead, offer ourselves up as a "being-for" in ethical response to the call of the other person
whom we find here before us: the stranger, the widow, and the orphan.(Levinas, 1969).

Levinas’s principles of ethics are applicable in the therapeutic encounter which places a

level of awareness, sensitivity and responsibility on the therapist. In this forum the patient in her

suffering is openly exposed and vulnerable. In the face of the appeal from the patient, the therapist

surrenders himself to the excruciating neediness of the patient. The therapist is cautioned not to

dominate the patient, to keep her fixed in the highest position with complete respect to her alterity.

The therapist approaches the patient in a desire to respectfully participate with her, in goodness

and passivity, on her journey of realization and actualization. In the therapeutic relationship the

patient acts in freedom, openly exploring possibilities in a creative and welcoming environment,

such that she not only can care and tend for herself, but she is also able to be responsible to Others.
LEVINAS AND PSYCHOLOGICAL PRACTICE 10

Therapeutic practice is based on a mutual exchange between the therapist and patient, the

medium of which is discourse, and the act of which is a gift.

To recognize the Other is therefore to come to him across the world of possessed things,
but at the same time to establish, by gift, community and universality. Language is
universal because it is the very passage from the individual to the general, because it
offers things which are mine to the Other. To speak is to make the world common, to
create commonplaces. Language does not refer to the generality of concepts, but lays the
foundations for a possession in common. It abolishes the inalienable property of
enjoyment. The world in discourse is no longer what it is in separation, in the being at
home with oneself where everything is given to me; it is what I give: the communicable,
the thought, the universal. (Levinas, 1969, p. 76)

What are the gifts of the therapist? It is suggested that there are two levels of giving, both

of which are found within the face-to-face dialog of the therapeutic encounter. The first gift is the

communion and comfort of radical intersubjectivity, which includes the gentle, passive and

unilateral offerings of surrender, acceptance, acknowledgement, patience and tolerance of the

suffering patient. This gift is founded on language. “The calling in question of the I, coextensive

with the manifestation of the Other in the face, we call language” (Levinas, 1969, p. 171). In a

sense, the first statement of the therapist is an apology, an expression of humility before the Other

in recognition of the infinite otherness of the patient that he will never fully know, “Apology does

not blindly affirm the self, but already appeals to the Other” (Levinas, 1969, p. 252).

The second is the gift of teaching. In the therapeutic forum teaching is an engaging dialog

in which the therapist shares his educated knowledge and experience of psychological practice

with that of the suffering patient.

To approach the Other in conversation is to welcome his expression, in which at each

instant he overflows the idea a thought would carry away from it. It is therefore to receive
from the Other beyond the capacity of the I, which means exactly: to have the idea of
infinity. But this also means: to be taught. The relation with the Other, or Conversation, is a
non-allergic relation, an ethical relation; but inasmuch as it is welcomed this conversation
is a teaching [enseignement]. Teaching is not reducible to maieutics; it comes from the
exterior and brings me more than I contain. (Levinas 1969, p. 51)
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However, this teaching is not a one way dialog; to be so would reduce the therapeutic

encounter to domination and violence. The patient in her presence also teaches the therapist, such

that the therapeutic dyad results in open and mutual recognition. “The first revelation of the

Other, presupposed in all the other relations with him, does not consist in grasping him in his

negative resistance and in circumventing him by ruse. I do not struggle with a faceless god, but I

respond to his expression, to his revelation” (Levinas, 1969, p. 197).

Helping the Patient move to Exteriority

How does the therapist help the patient move from her interiority to exteriority, and do so

within the Levinasian framework of ethical responsibility? Three themes are here suggested:

(1) the therapist’s self disclosure to the patient; (2) allowing the patient to teach the therapist; and

(3) the enactment of the ethical relation in the practice of radical intersubjectivity.

Therapist Self Disclosure

The very presence of the patient in the therapeutic encounter is their first opening. In this

forum the call to exteriority begins. In the face-to-face exchange, a radical intersubjectivity is

established which by its very nature breaks the barriers of interiority and exteriority. The gift of

psychological technique further advances the opening. This is based on an ongoing dialog,

wherein the patient and therapist openly expose themselves to one another in mutual surrender.

The discourse is bidirectional and is implicit in the movement from interiority to exteriority.

While their histories, roles and skills are notably different, both therapist and patient are engaged

in a vulnerable exposure and an open available exchange. The therapist is not a “blank slate” as

was asserted by the Freudian analysts at the beginning of the era of psychological practice.

Rather, the therapist conducts an open dialog, to the limits that the patient’s psychological state
LEVINAS AND PSYCHOLOGICAL PRACTICE 12

can tolerate. The degree of the therapist’s disclosure to the patient has long been a focus of

Karen Maroda, a noted clinical psychologist, who writes:

But within this small theater, where only certain acts can be played out, there is no such
limitation on the world of emotion, which is at the heart of the therapeutic enterprise. All
manner of emotions can be expressed, by both analyst and patient, even though the
analyst must take greater responsibility for finding constructive and helpful ways to
express herself. For example, rather than simply disclosing every strong feeling the
analyst has, feelings should be expressed at the patient's direction and behest, allowing
him to be in control of the emotional action between them. If the analyst discloses
primarily when the patient asks for it, either overtly or through repeated projective
identifications, then the patient is less likely to be victimized by the analyst's need to
relieve herself at the patient's expense. (Maroda, 1999, p. 138)

The therapist is thus called upon to follow an ethical practice of engagement, presenting an

attitude of cognitive and emotional participation in the radically intersubjective relationship, with

the realization that “the order of developmental progression dictates that the interpersonal

necessarily occurs first, with the intrapsychic following” (Maroda, 1999, p.84). This is another

way of saying that celebrating the patient’s alterity in a relation of bi-directional dialog is the start

of psychic healing. In the therapeutic dyad the act of surrender to the ineffable Other “….

constitutes an emotional opening up, a falling away of the analyst's resistance to being known by

the patient in the deepest way possible…as such, the analyst's surrender is both an intrapsychic and

an interpersonal event” (Maroda, 1999, p. 58).

Maroda’s position on the therapeutic value of disclosure is unambiguous: “The key

ingredients to successful disclosures center on affective responses and on the therapist's

willingness to be open about his or her own experience…it is the therapist's willingness to be

forthcoming and to show emotion that is curative and stimulates emotional honesty in the patient”

(Maroda, 1999, p. 103).

Allowing the patient to teach the therapist

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The therapeutic dyad works because the relationship and dialog runs both ways in a

mutual surrender, wherein the therapist and the patient open themselves in an intimate exchange.

For the patient this surrendering is transformational, as Maroda (1999) writes: “Based on my

own clinical experience, I would take this one step further and state that surrender is the self-

altering process. In the moment that a person surrenders he or she is irrevocably changed” (p.54).

While the act of surrender is therapeutic, it is also recognized that this opening is a gift within the

dyad: an offering of the Other’s experience providing insight into their very essence.

It is an honoring of the Other for the therapist to accept the patient’s gift of teaching:

“Maybe the "good therapist" is the person who remains willing to let the other person reveal

himself to him” (Halling, 1975, p. 223). The therapist is called upon, within his commitment

to the ethical relation, to receive this offering with interest and grace. The ethical therapist is

aware he is not the sole owner of truth and knowledge, for that would be totalizing. In the field

of human interaction we are all inadequate experts. We all grope along in intersubjectivity, often

in innocuously idle conversation, but at other moments we reach the heights of ethical relation in

the act of teaching one another.

The ethically responsible therapist celebrates the separation and alterity of the patient and

places her above all: “First, we need to remember that the coming into question of one's own

freedom is simultaneously the welcoming of the Other, the Other over whom I can have no power”

(Halling, 1975, p. 215). Finally, the notion of learning from the patient is celebrated by Brent

Robbins (2000) who so poetically writes:

Levinas (1969) shows us that all learning comes from the Other. To uphold the ethical
responsibility of our call to be psychotherapists, our learning-to-be-psychotherapists must
ultimately come from the client. We learn from our patients. It is the patient who teaches us
how to put ourselves out of business. (p. 2).

Treating the patient within the practice of radical intersubjectivity

LEVINAS AND PSYCHOLOGICAL PRACTICE 14

Interiority to excess is by its very nature a loss of ethical responsibility to the Other. This is

a concept lost in the ipsiety of suffering. However, by treating the Other in the highest Levinasian

ethical relation, and by maintaining the notion of radical intersubjectivity, the therapist is able to

teach the patient, through the ongoing ethical relationship within the therapeutic encounter, to

involve herself in the activities of the world and to act in ethical responsibility to the Other.

“First, if ethics is first philosophy then therapy is an ethical event. It is ethical not simply

because ethical principles govern the relationship and the ongoing process. It is ethical because

the client as Other presents a claim on me” (Dueck, 2006, p. 279). In saying this, the therapist is

called to meet the ethical principles set by Levinasian philosophy within the relation of a radical

intersubjectivity. Thus the therapist serves the patient by conducting a practice that is the very

embodiment of the ethical relation.

Paul Marcus describes the role of the therapist in this endeavor as follows: “In this context,

the role of the analyst is to expand the analysand’s awareness and understanding of what conscious

and unconscious personal factors (e.g., thoughts, feelings, wishes, and fantasies) and, especially,

valuative commitments that impede, diminish, or take the place of an ethic of responsibility for the

Other” (2007, p. 523).

Another view of ethically enabled treatment is described by George Sayre, who after

considering the well meaning but ultimately flawed client-centered approach to therapy, states

“…it seems to me to be profoundly dehumanizing to deny one of the most profound aspirations of

those we work with, namely, to be good….in rejecting the ego-logical ethic of therapy and moving

toward a de-centered understanding, we are better able to understand people within the reality of

their lives” (2005, p. 46).

LEVINAS AND PSYCHOLOGICAL PRACTICE 15

So, what is the realization of radical intersubjectivity? There is no “handbook of relations”

that exists for the therapist: the ethical relationship is higher and more elusive than any set of

therapeutic methods, techniques and skills known to the well educated practitioner. It may be said

that radical intersubjectivity reflects a state-of-being, reaching beyond facticity and knowledge,

beyond empathy and altruism, and enters into the realm of the transcendent. Radical

intersubjectivity is an implicit understanding of the infinitely distant and the infinitely close; a state

where time itself spans the dimensions of past and future and are embodied in the very present. It

is a metaphysical relation. Radical intersubjectivity is a state where the patient is seen in their

resplendent apparition, where the therapist bears witness, with utmost passivity and humility, with

the unknowable being of the Other that sits before him. In radical intersubjectivity the therapist

extends his hand in grace, which precedes his language. This is a presence that is ineffable but is

palpably felt. It is a state “of before”, a primordial being-connected to the wellspring of the

profoundly ethical commandments that is our human nature. This view may contain the highest

aspirations of Levinasian philosophy: a profound relation of goodness beyond goodness.

Reflections and Conclusions: On the Synthesis of Philosophy and Psychology

It is my perspective that philosophy is the underpinning of psychology. While

psychology addresses the suffering of the human condition, and the resulting cognitive,

behavioral, and affective outcomes, philosophy teaches us a way of existing in the world.

Philosophy is more than a subjective and relativistic psychological world view; that is, an

intellectual or emotional coloring of a perception of living. Rather, philosophy provides a direct

anchoring and sensibility that holds existence, human life, in an abiding, orderly and coherent

belief. While psychology addresses the internal and external behavioral and emotive affects, the

symptoms of a distorted view of existence, philosophy directly addresses, head-on, the meaning
LEVINAS AND PSYCHOLOGICAL PRACTICE 16

of existence, and provides a guidepost for the transformation of how a patient can live in the

world.

This paper examines the notion of interiority and exteriority, as defined within the

Levinasian philosophy, and presents a perspective for working with the suffering patient in the

therapeutic encounter. It is asserted that when the patient is encapsulated in her interiority, to the

exclusion of the world, the consequence is psychological dysfunction. Such a patient is chained to

her suffering. By denying herself exteriority, the patient is imprisoned in two ways. First, she is

stuck mute, in laryngitis of a sort, and is unable to intentionally call to the Other and cannot

receive the gifts of assistance and grace. Second, by not being in the world she is not present to

hear the Other’s call. She has denied herself the transcendent exaltation of service to the suffering

Other. Such is the highest goal of the therapeutic encounter: to enable the patient to not only

attend to herself, but to recognize and serve the Other.

In the therapeutic encounter the therapist is called into an ethical practice: to establish a

non-totalizing relation where the patient is recognized and honored for her infinite otherness, yet is

helped with the passivity that only the gifts of discourse and teaching enable. This paper suggests

three means for the therapist in achieving an ethical psychological therapy: the therapist’s

disclosure to the patient, allowing the patient to teach the therapist, and the practice of radical

intersubjectivity. It is posited that radical intersubjectivity is more than a set of carefully practiced

psychological approaches. Rather, for the therapist it is a state of being, a metaphysical relation of

gentleness and grace beyond judgment, where the infinitely unknowable Other is so passively

honored, and is received with transcendent goodness.

LEVINAS AND PSYCHOLOGICAL PRACTICE 17

References

Berg, J. H. van den. (1972). A different existence; principles of phenomenological

psychopathology. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press.

Dueck, A., & Goodman, D. (2007). Expiation, substitution and surrender: Levinasian

implications for psychotherapy. Pastoral Psychology. 55(5), 601-617.

Gantt, E. E. (1994). Truth, freedom and responsibility in the dialogues of psychotherapy. Journal

of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology. 14(2), 146-158.

Halling, S. (1975). The Implications of Emmanuel Levinas’ Totality and Infinity for Therapy. In

A. Giorgi, C.T. Fischer, and E.L. Murray (Eds.), Duquesne Studies in Phenomenological

Psychology, Volume II. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press.

Lévinas, E. (1969). Totality and infinity: an essay on exteriority. Translated by Alphonso Lingis.

Publisher Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press

Marcus, P. (2007). "You are, therefore I am": Emmanuel Levinas and psychoanalysis.

Psychoanalytic Review. 94(4), 515-527.

Maroda, K. J. (1999). Seduction, surrender, and transformation: Emotional engagement in the

analytic process. Mahwah, NJ, US: Analytic Press.

Robbins, B. D. (2000). Putting ourselves out of business: Implications of Levinas for psychology.

Retrieved June 1, 2010 from http://mythosandlogos.com/Levinaspaper.html

Sayre, G. (2005). Toward a therapy for the Other. European Journal of Psychotherapy,

Counselling and Health. 7(1-2), 37-47.

Williams, R. N. (2007). Levinas and psychoanalysis: The radical turn outward and upward.

Psychoanalytic Review. 94(4), 681-701.

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Appendix

About the author

David Flaxer is a second year graduate student in the Master’s of Psychology program at

Seattle University. He possesses several advanced degrees in engineering and computer

technology. Prior to his turn to psychology, David was a research scientist at the IBM

Corporation focusing on the study of technology and social systems. While at IBM he produced

numerous patents, papers, and presentations in addition to directing the development of software

applications. In 2006 he culminated his career with a long-term international assignment in

Beijing China, where he had the opportunity to mentor a new generation of technology

researchers. His undergraduate degree embraced architecture and energy efficient building

technology. In the 1980’s he employed these skills while serving as Executive Director of a non-

profit housing organization serving low-income households in rural New York. When he is not

studying in Seattle you can find him boatbuilding or sailing his historic wooden boats in the great

waters of the Puget Sound. Correspondence can be sent to: david@flaxer.org.

About the paper

This paper was presented at the 8th Annual Psychology for the Other Seminar, Levinas

and Psychoanalysis/Psychotherapy: a Conversation, hosted by Seattle University’s Graduate

Program in Existential-Phenomenological Therapeutic Psychology, October 22-24, 2010.