Abstract

DAVIS, Duane H.. Communication Breakdown: Understandings of the Other and Caring for Others. Nat. hum. [online]. 2009, vol.11, n.1, pp.35-56. ISSN 1517-2430.

Robert Litman describes four remarkable cases where individuals reveal this repressed knowledge through dream analysis after the suicide of the “other.” In each case, there comes a moment of recognition of the significance of the dream such that the subject realizes culpability. And in each case, this culpability had to do with a communication breakdown that is revealed through psychoanalysis. I want to deconstruct the transference / counter-transference relationship as a symbiotic reciprocity. I do not venture forth unchanged as I transcend who I was through language with others. Language is alteration of subjectivity. I offer a criticism of certain understandings of alterity involved in psychotherapy by examining the general situation of the encounter with others through the peculiar language-event of psychotherapy. I must recognize that the threat of the alterity of the patient is also the promise of my ability to offer help. If we take seriously the transcendence of the language-event of therapy, we see that the process of altering another involves changes for all involved.

Keywords : Reversibility; transference; Maurice Merleau-Ponty; Robert Litman; Alterity; Phenomenology; Transcendence; Psychotherapy.

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