ABSTRACT
In analysis, the state of wakefulness of the analyst, which might involve an element of anxiety, becomes the guardian of his or her responsibility for the patient. Insomnia is conceived by Emmanuel Levinas as the very awakening of the ego to others, its animation or its inspiration by the other. Jean Laplanche seeks again and again to differentiate himself from Levinas, even though he often speaks the same language, and even though without realising it, the latter was a source of inspiration for him. For Levinas, inspiration is a mark of the combined autonomy and heteronomy of the responsible subject. “Inspiration can be understood”, R. Calin and F. D. Sebbah write, as a non-Kantian response to the Kantian problem of knowing how the moral subject becomes the author of the obligation to which he submits. Both Levinasian philosophy and Laplanchian thought take very serious account of the fact that man is capable of conducting himself in the most atrocious ways imaginable.
