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Levinas, Psychotherapy, and the Ethics of Suffering

Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah

This article argues that by adopting a medical approach to the conceptualization, diagnosis, and treatment of emotional and psychological distress, contemporary psychotherapy has robbed itself of the possibility of genuinely understanding the radically ethical nature and significance of human suffering. This article discusses both some of the original sources and assumptions that provided the impetus for the adoption of the medical model in psychotherapy and also some contemporary restatements of these original positions. In opposition to both the dualism and reductionism inherent in medical approaches to psychotherapy, this article aims at providing a more hermeneutic-phenomenological understanding of human suffering, particularly as detailed in the work of the French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas. Such an alternative approach will seek to explicate the radically ethical nature of human suffering by recognizing therapists’ fundamental responsibility to "suffer-with" and "suffer-for" their clients.

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