The ethical philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas has been employed to challenge reductionary varieties of clinical work and to think about radical forms of justice in the clinic. Unfortunately, in translating from philosophy to the clinic, therapists leave behind some of Levinas's radical commitments to make it more practicable. The Levinasian ethical imperative is to resist positioning oneself in relation to the Other that in any way collapses alterity. This Other of radical alterity cannot be thought of as another egoic human being like myself without betraying the alterity of the Other. A commitment to Levinasian ethics is difficult to situate within a clinical paradigm premised on alliance and hermeneutic processes of meaning and understanding. I contend that clinical work following Levinas would have to (counterintuitively) prioritize an ethics of alterity above the image of clinical change itself. To make this case, I summarize the hermeneutic approach to Levinasian "therapeutics" exemplified by the intersubjective psychoanalysis of Donna Orange and offer a critique of that approach as somewhat at odds with the radical commitments of Levinasian ethics. I also provide key insights from the work of Lacan and Laplanche, explore critical passages from Levinas which point to an ethics beyond the limits of hermeneutics, and offer an alternative approach to reading Levinas clinically: Antihermeneutic psychoanalysis. Public Significance StatementThis article advances the idea that the ethical philosophy of Levinas is a critique of hermeneutic understanding. Relevant for theorists and clinicians, this rethinking of Levinas (as antihermeneutics) points to a hitherto unexplored connection to the psychoanalysis of Lacan and Laplanche and a new way of taking up Levinas in the clinic.
Following the Second World War, Adorno et al.'s The Authoritarian Personality (1950/2019) became the most influential engagement between Frankfurt School critical theorists and the field of psychology. The recent publication of Adorno's retracted "Remarks on The Authoritarian Personality" (2019) provides a timely impetus to reexamine and challenge certain long-held ideas about Adorno's contribution to psychology-for instance that The Authoritarian Personality reduces complex social phenomena to individual motivation and personality. Adorno's Remarks provide an alternative approach to the usual reading of The Authoritarian Personality, where the psychology of authoritarianism points to a contradiction at the very core of the concept of psychology, aligning the study with Adorno's more critical and dialectical works. In this article, I challenge how Adorno and The Authoritarian Personality are commonly taken up in critical psychology and introduce "negative psychology" as Adorno's central contribution to the field modeled in his reading of psychoanalysis and his theory of negative dialectics. Reframed in this way, Adorno can continue to serve as a crucial site of critical engagement for psychologists. 1 | INTRODUCTION Following the Second World War, Adorno et al.'s The Authoritarian Personality (1950/2019) became the most influential engagement between Frankfurt School critical theorists and the field of psychology-1000 pages on the psychology of prejudice and oppression which, always salient, is of pressing interest in light of the recent rise of authoritarian regimes across the world. And, as is the case with influential engagements, a standard reading of the study has sedimented in commentaries on the topic. The recent publication of Theodor W. Adorno's retracted
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