This article addresses the thorny issue of the psychologist or psychotherapist's values or ethical orientation. The suggestion is made that certain aspects of Jacques Lacan's psychoanalytical theory provide the resources to overcome the obstacle of arbitrariness or relativism faced by psychotherapists who unavoidably have to take an ethical stance -implicitly if not explicitly -in relation to clients' or analysands' lives and decisions. The dilemma faced by the psychotherapist is recontructed and specific aspects of the poststructuralist psychoanalytical theory of Lacan are addressed. These include the function of the subject's position in the symbolic register (in contrast to the imaginary register of the ego), the role of the unconscious as the 'discourse of the Other', of narrative and of repressed signifiers as ethical 'anchoring points'. Crucially, however, the implications of the register of the 'real' for the ethics of the psychoanalyst as psychotherapist are added. These, offer invaluable means of overcoming the dilemma of ethical relativism faced by psychotherapists.
What does it mean, to be ‘autonomous’, and more specifically, is it still possible to discern a modicum of ‘autonomy’ on the part of people in contemporary ‘carceral’ society to a significant degree — that is, a degree not limited to a handful of individuals whose autonomy one may discern in their ‘critical’ actions vis-à-vis mainstream discourses and behaviour? Is there indeed evidence, as implied by the question above, that the majority of people today function as ‘docile bodies’, in Foucault's words? In this paper it is argued that Foucault — especially in his study of ancient sexuality — provides one with a model for autonomy in a psychical as well as ethical sense, which can be articulated in terms of what Hellenistic thinkers termed ‘the care of the self’. Further that, for various reasons, this model is worth emulating, given the disciplinary, ‘panoptical’ structure and functioning of contemporary society, which tends to reduce individuals to ‘docile bodies’. It is noteworthy that, according to Foucault, psychology has been historically complicit in this process.
Today nature is put under tremendous pressure through human, including technological, activities — so much so that some haveraised the question of nature's (and all living creatures') survival. It seems as if the world is on a slippery slope, sliding towards its own destruction. Even critical thought and practice seem powerless to affect those in power, whose leadership seems: to bear decisively on whether the current situation can be improved or not. This tends to induce pessimism. On the other hand, Heidegger's philosophy of technology, and especially Kristeva's psychoanalytical thought, inspire hope that, whatever the odds may be against such a possibility, at least it is conceivable that humankind may resurrect the culture of ‘revolt’. This could recuperate nature from the periphery of human concerns where it has, arguably for a considerable time, occupied the non-position of what Kristeva calls the ‘abject’, and restore it to the formerly revered realm that has engendered (and still does) the emergence of all life on earth. A critical psychology that situates individual subjects in the encompassing context, not merely of technophiliac society but of a society crucially dependent on nature, can contribute substantially to nature-sensitive social practices.
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