ABSTRACT
This paper offers a ‘non-expert’ perspective on the ‘Levinas and psychotherapy’ symposium, highlighting in particular Levinas’ overarching focus on the constitutive primacy of the ethical obligation to the other, and its attendant implications for therapeutic work. In particular, the paper examines the relevance of Levinas’ radical thinking to questions of knowing and certainty in the Western psychology tradition, and to the culturally urgent challenges posed by individualism, other-centredness and intersubjectivity. It is argued that in the epoch of late modernity, Levinas’ work makes an important contribution to ‘new paradigm’ thinking and to the evolution of human consciousness in which we are all caught up.
