ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines a practice-based approach termed ‘post-existentialism’ where the problematics of such a search for meaning might be helped by considering some implications of the ethics of Levinas, which are taken as being more post-existential than the existential ethics of Buber. Thinking relationally, psychoanalysis cannot avoid revisiting its most basic premises: a thought constructed of, and deliberating a relation cannot ultimately entertain absolute notions. In a relation there is no one location, no one knowledge, no one self and no one truth. Rozmarin goes on to show, drawing on the French philosopher Emanuel Levinas, contradictions in a relational approach based on knowledge. An implication of ethics as a basis of practice is that there is an implied transformation where wellbeing for others comes before wellbeing for myself, including my apparent vested interest group. The relation to the client is like a relation to infinity: perpetually beyond experience, making the organising structures of experience possible.
