ABSTRACT
The burgeoning discussion of the implications of Levinas’ ethical perspective for therapy has focused primarily on the therapist’s relationship to the client, but has not yet addressed the client’s experience in individual therapy. Levinas places our call to respond to the needs of the Other at the center of human existence. This Other-centered perspective lies in sharp contrast to the client-centered ethics of individual therapy as traditionally taught and practiced. Individual therapy not only fails to require clients to respond to the needs of an Other, it is intentionally constructed to preclude the client from being confronted with the needs of an Other. Thus, from a Levinasian perspective, the ‘client-centered’ ethics of individual therapy as traditionally understood are fundamentally unethical for the client. Using a case narrative as an example, I propose the possibility of individual therapy as a process of de-centering, for both the therapist and the client.
