ABSTRACT
Emmanuel Levinas challenges the ego-centric, narcissistic representation of the person by arguing that therapists are subject to putting the other first, with the consequence that they are responsible for the other's responsibility. Does this lead to a very different type of existentialism? Levinas argues that ethics must always precede ontology. Levinas was very interested in Hamlet; he challenged the ontological by suggesting that ethical questions must always come before those of being, and this, it will be argued, is a phenomenological, rather than a moral, necessity. Levinas perhaps helps therapists to raise crucial questions about ethics and vested interests. The inter-subjective, existential and post-existential theories of ethics of M. Buber and Levinas are the main focus here, as opposed to other notions of ethics which do not make a distinctive relation to other people the central feature. For Buber, only in the "I-Thou" relation does the psychological therapist achieve genuine presence.
