ABSTRACT
When I speak of Levinasian ethics to clinical colleagues, without fail the apprehensive questions emerge: isn’t this radical responsibility, this deference to the other, a disguised masochism? What about the patient, or the clinician, already exploited as a parentified child, who needs to learn to feel less responsible? Isn’t ethics, of the type you describe, a form of what Bernard Brandchaft (2007) has named pathological accommodation, or what Winnicott (1965) called the false-self? Have we here narcissism hidden behind a mirage of religion? We need only to consult our daily news to see where that can lead its hubristic self-deluders. My colleagues who raise these questions do not wish to evade the ethical call; they want to understand how it works, and to be sure it will destroy neither the humanity they feel called to heal, nor their own. Thus, I will use this opportunity to make some distinctions – yes, I will put on my philosophical hat – to help clarify ethics, masochism, accommodation, and subjectivity. Undoubtedly, confronting clinical work with Levinasian ethics should arouse worries, but others than those just mentioned.
