ABSTRACT
Simply stated, the aim of Levinas’s phenomenological ethics is no different from the aim of psychotherapeutic practice: both show the way toward the transformation of egoic need into interpersonal desire; both seek to subvert and transform cultivated violence into living celebration. In this chapter I show that both approaches belong together. But, must we not say of Levinas and Freud what Pontalis, quoting André-Green (‘a practised expert on Freud and an attentive reader of Merleau-Ponty’) says of Merleau-Ponty and Freud, that they missed the rendezvous?2 Yet is not this deferred meeting between phenomenology and psychoanalysis eagerly awaited to this day, inasmuch as these separate but convergent discourses both hold the promise of releasing us from the oculocentric predicament that has characterized the Western metaphysical and messianic traditions from their Utopian origins to the present time of technocratic impoverishment? The ‘dream’ has ended, but we can but dream on. And so I propose to dream up a meeting on the question of meeting between Levinas and Pontalis, who epitomize and bespeak in their deference and subtlety the highest qualities of phenomenological and psychoanalytic praxis.
