ABSTRACT
Levinas (1969) uses the metaphor of opening the door as a way to capture what he calls our infinite responsibility to the other. He accompanies this hospitable gesture with the words “après vous” – after you – a linguistic acknowledgement of the other’s overarching command that I care for him above me, a command not uttered directly but proclaimed by his very existence. Levinas’s point is that the other person makes me aware of the fact that I am never apart from subjectivity. The other is always first. I am called to open the door to the “widow, the orphan, and the stranger”. I use this metaphor as a stepping-off point from which to explore the complications of caring within a psychoanalytically informed relationship. Orange’s (2010, 2011) recent attention to the ethical turn in psychoanalysis, the clinician’s responsibility to the suffering stranger, and the relevance of thinkers such as Levinas to that turn challenge us to consider the ethical implications of our therapeutic care taking. In fact, for Levinas (1999), “to perceive that we come after an other whoever he may be – that is ethics” (p. 167). This radical ethics presents a particular challenge to the psychoanalytic practitioner who is obligated, by one’s practice ethics, to continually plumb the depths of her own subjectivity to be fully present for the other.
